The engineering students check out the software they devised. A Telegraph picture

Hazaribagh, April 6: Finding the status of plantation drives and spotting deforestation-prone zones would no more be a Herculean task.

Just a click and all information would pop up on the desktops of the forest department officials, thanks to Forest Offence Monitor ? a software developed by four wannabe techies of the state studying in R.P Sharma Institute of Technology in Patna.

The forest department officials of Dhanbad and Dehradun have purchased the software for Rs 15,000 to boost plantation drives and keep tabs on illegal felling.

Besides maintaining a list of people arrested for violating norms and vehicles seized, the software would remind the officials of pending court cases in detail.

Showing interest in the software, the forest department officials of Koderma, Chatra and Giridih have requested the budding techies to visit their regions for a demonstration.

Masoom, the mastermind behind the software, said the forest department officials would just have to feed some data to get detailed information regarding any incident of yesteryears.

Assuring that the software would help officials cut down on time, Masoom said: ?The purchasers of the software also give us the assignment of feeding data.?

Describing the nitty-gritty of the software, Masoom said, the software is capable of categorising offences under different sections of the Forest Act.

?So far, we have recorded 3,745 cases taking place around the district from 1994-2004 in the software. If required, it can also retrieve the details of offenders,? he pointed out.

But that?s not all. The software would also maintain vigil on the activities of the forest department officials. One can check the performance of all the officials in a jiffy, he added.

Apart from Masoom, the team of ?famous four? includes Pratlekh Satyam of Deoghar, Priyadarshan Keshav and Om Prakash Singh of Dhanbad.

Masoom and Priyadarshan are final year M. Tech (electronics and communication system) students. Satyam is a student of computer of science, while Om Prakash is doing bachelors in computer application.

Gelling well while studying in the R.P Sharma Institute of Technology in Patna, they formed Juvenile Engineers? Club to participate in various science exhibitions.

The team is now developing two more softwares?pugmark and civil offence monitor (COM). While pugmarks would help store information regarding wild animals, the COM would prove handy to the police for retrieving data regarding criminals.

The COM, on the other hand, will work in similar style as the software for the forest department, he added.