A man had very little information to share about an accident. All he knew was that the truck which ran over his wife in Nagpur had red markings, but he couldn’t identify its size or make. With the help of artificial intelligence (AI), the police managed to trace and arrest the accused within 36 hours.
“The victim could provide only minimal details,” said Harsh Poddar, Superintendent of Police, Nagpur Rural.
“What we did was collect CCTV footage—or metadata, as we call it—from three toll nakas, each 15–20 km apart, and analyse it using two AI algorithms, both based on Computer Vision technology,” said Harsh Poddar, Superintendent of Police, Nagpur Rural, while speaking to Media.
The incident took place on Raksha Bandhan, August 9, when a man and his wife were riding a bike in Nagpur. A speeding truck hit them, causing the woman to fall onto the road, where she was tragically run over. The truck fled the spot. In a heartbreaking moment, the grieving husband tied his wife’s body to his bike and rode back to their village in Madhya Pradesh—a distressing video of which went viral on social media.
Maharashtra has developed a special purpose vehicle named MARVEL (Maharashtra Research and Vigilance for Enhanced Law Enforcement), the first state-level police AI system in India, fully owned by the state government.
Explaining the investigation, Poddar said, “The first algorithm analysed the CCTV footage to identify trucks with red markings. The second algorithm calculated the average speed of these trucks to narrow down the possible suspect vehicle. Based on this, one truck was identified. A team from Nagpur Rural Police then traced and arrested the accused on the Gwalior–Kanpur highway, about 700 km from Nagpur, and seized the vehicle. Within 36 hours, the case was solved using AI.”
He added, “We’ve been collaborating with 13 different departments to develop AI-driven solutions. Since data is the main fuel for AI—and the government has vast amounts of it—we’ve been analysing this data to create solutions that strengthen the entire ecosystem.”
Highlighting the difference between AI and traditional investigations, the officer explained, “Data that would take hours or even days to examine manually can now be processed within minutes, helping us reach actionable outcomes much faster.” (Agencies)
