Magistrate manual

DigiFIR Court is the phone app of a judicial magistrate. In it the magistrate decides complaints held back as probable duplicates, decides police closure reports, takes cognizance of chargesheets, records court orders on any FIR in the court's jurisdiction, and asks police stations for status reports. Every decision is signed with the magistrate's phone key and recorded on the ledger. Nothing is ever deleted: each order is a new version of the FIR.

The app works in English and Hindi. It runs only on the phone enrolled for the officer; there is no web sign-in.

Set up your phone

1. Install the app and type the JO code your High Court gave you, for example RJ01427.
2. On Verify this phone, choose the SIM registered for your JO code. The app sends one SMS from it, which the registrar sees as a risk signal.
3. The phone makes its own key in its secure hardware and shows an enrolment code. Go to the High Court's registrar.
4. The registrar checks you and your identity card in person, scans the code, and approves your roles, courts, designation and validity.
5. Read what the registrar approved on your phone, and confirm it. The registrar then signs the registration on the ledger.
6. Set a six-digit app PIN.

NOTE

The SIM is checked again at every unlock on Android. If it is taken out, signing stops until the phone is verified again. After five wrong PINs, or after Forgot PIN?, the phone is forgotten, and new enrolments of your JO code are held for a day.

The screens

Tab	What is there
Home	What waits for you, time limits, notifications
Review	To decide: probable duplicates, closure reports, chargesheets
Records	FIRs of your court's stations, and Check a police document
Insights	How many decided and how fast; the weekly summary
Profile	This phone, app PIN, auto-lock, fingerprint, signing certificate, On leave, notifications, help from your CPC

Decide a probable duplicate

A complaint reaches you when the station's officer finds that the same incident may already be registered and keeps it for a magistrate. DigiFIR never refuses such a complaint.

1. Open Review, then To decide, and tap the item: Same incident?
2. Compare the two side by side. How alike they are gives a score; Why this score breaks it down by meaning, wording, date and place, with Hindi and English matched phrase by phrase.
3. Choose Same incident or Different incident.
4. Enter the Court reference and the Written reasoning, at least 20 characters. You can tap Dictate to speak it.
5. Tap Sign and record.

Decision	Result
Same incident	Link confirmed: the complaint is linked to the existing case
Different incident	The complaint goes back to the station, which must register it as its own FIR, keeping its original filing time

There is no "reject".

Decide a closure report

1. Open the closure report from Review.
2. Choose Accept closure, or Further investigation (BNSS s.193(9)).
3. Enter the reference and reasons, and sign.

Accepting closes the case. Further investigation sends it back to the police as under investigation.

Take cognizance of a chargesheet

1. Open the chargesheet and tap Take cognizance.
2. Pick the first hearing from the court days offered, and type the order reference.
3. Tap Get the case number. The CNR number shows under What you sign, with the FIR, the hearing and the reference.
4. Tap Sign and record.

The result is Case opened in eCourts with that CNR number. While eCourts is reached through its simulator, the app says the case was opened in the court record but is not in eCourts yet.

Record a court order

Open an FIR in Records and tap Record a court order. Each order is added as a new version of the FIR.

Order	Notes
Remand order	Police or judicial custody, at most 15 days per order (BNSS s.187(2))
Bail order	Grant or reject bail, regular or default bail (BNSS s.187(3))
Transfer the investigation	To another station in the court's transfer list
Quash this FIR	Records a High Court order (BNSS s.528). Attach the order first: its PDF, or Photograph a page of every page of the paper copy. The order is uploaded encrypted and registered by its fingerprint, and the quash names it.

For a remand or bail order made by a Sessions Court or the High Court, choose Whose order and give the superior court, the order's date and its reference. An order dated after the day you sign is refused before signing.

Before every signature, What you sign shows exactly what will be recorded. Reasons longer than the ledger keeps are refused before signing, never cut.

Ask a station for a status report

1. Open an FIR and tap Ask for a report.
2. Choose what you want to know: why it is late, what is still pending, or when it will be filed. Give 3 or 7 days to reply.
3. Tap Send request.

The SHO answers in the police app, and the reply shows on the FIR.

The FIR shows the time limits the app can count: the two months of BNSS s.193(2) for the offences it lists, and the 60 or 90 days of custody after the first remand, after which the accused is entitled to default bail (s.187(3)). On other FIRs the app shows No time limit counted, because there is no general chargesheet deadline.

Check a police document

Open Records and use Check a police document. Paste an FIR number, a Zero FIR number or a whole message. The app says whether the FIR number in it is a registered FIR and shows its latest version, which helps against "digital arrest" scams. Only the number is checked, not the rest of the message. A complaint number is recognised as a complaint, with the FIR registered for it if there is one.

Weekly summary

In Insights, open Weekly summary · PDF. The summary is signed with your device key. Tap Share with the High Court to send it to the High Court registry.

On leave

In Profile, open On leave. Choose the link officer and how long. Read the court, the link officer and the first and last day under What you sign, then sign. New items go to the link officer while the leave lasts. Ending it early is also recorded on the ledger.

Working offline

A decision signed while the police network or the internet is down waits on the phone, encrypted, and is sent automatically later, for up to 30 days. The last court data stays readable, marked with the time it was fetched.

App lock and security

• The app asks for your PIN or fingerprint at every start and after the auto-lock time. See App lock.
• Screenshots and screen recording are blocked on Android. On iPhone, the app switcher, screen recordings and mirroring show the logo instead of the screen.

Try it without a backend

In demo mode, type any JO code such as RJ01427. SIM 1 matches; SIM 2 shows the mismatch. A blocked complaint arrives on Review within a few seconds. Demo and test data lists the sample FIRs.

Sources: digifir-magistrate-app on the migration branch: README.md, docs/02-run-the-app.md, docs/04-enrolment-and-sim-check.md, docs/11-security.md, docs/app-lock.md, assets/i18n/en.json; digifir-chaincode docs/SPEC.md section 5.