Siddaramaiah at the inauguration of the kiosk in Bangalore on Friday. (Bangalore News Photos)

Bangalore, Nov. 14: A Bangalorean who wants to lodge an FIR will no longer need to worry about the hassles she might face at the police station.

She wouldn’t even need to find out which police station has jurisdiction over the purported crime spot.

All she’ll have to do is travel to the city’s first Remote FIR Registration Centre, opened today at Mantri Mall in central Bangalore’s Malleshwaram locality.

It’s a kiosk where anyone can walk in, sit before a computer terminal and file an FIR via video-conferencing with a dedicated officer at the Control Centre, also launched today.

For the police, the kiosk will be what ATMs are to banks. Open 24x7, it will be manned by a lone policeman to guide the complainant.

After watching the public response for three months, the police plan to set up more such kiosks across Karnataka, state police chief Lalrokhuma Pachuau said. Sources said Bangalore alone could have about 50 such kiosks.

“This is how technology should be used,” chief minister P.C. Siddaramaiah said as he inaugurated the kiosk. “The government will provide any help to the police to introduce such people-friendly initiatives.”

The kiosk looks like a large and swanky telephone booth and is fitted with a computer screen, a touch screen, a microphone with crisp audio, a high-definition web cam and a regular telephone.

Complainants can get relevant documents scanned at the kiosk and attach them to the FIR. They can sign the FIR after it is registered and take out a printed copy.

A dedicated force manning the Control Centre will register the FIRs and send them to the right police station.

Police commissioner M.N. Reddi, a tech-savvy officer who answers people’s complaints and suggestions even on Twitter, said the initiative was part of a larger outreach programme.

“It’s easy to walk into the kiosk and conference with an officer at the control centre. It’s also a very transparent and people-friendly system,” he said.

State home minister K.J. George said: “More often than not, a crime goes unreported because citizens are worried about the hassles of going to a police station. This facility will help the police address crime faster and avoid unnecessary paperwork.”

The kiosk is equipped with a Cisco TelePresence system. “It’s the same system that we installed in Barcelona, Nice (France) and Chicago,” said Ashok Nandabattlu, solutions architect, Collaboration Technology Group, Cisco India.

“This technology is already being used in the banking sector and can be tailored to suit the specific needs of other spheres as well.”

Bangalore traffic police are already equipped with Blackberry handsets that are linked to the traffic management centre. Officers use their Blackberries to register traffic violations and issue e-challans.