Glossary

Law and procedure

Term	Meaning
BNS	Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, 2023: the Act defining offences and punishments, in force since 1 July 2024 in place of the Indian Penal Code
BNSS	Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita, 2023: the Act of criminal procedure, in place of the Code of Criminal Procedure
BSA	Bharatiya Sakshya Adhiniyam, 2023: the Act of evidence, including electronic records, in place of the Indian Evidence Act
Complaint	Information about an offence given by a person to the police. In DigiFIR it gets a complaint number and is not yet an FIR.
FIR	First Information Report: information about a cognizable offence recorded by the officer in charge of a police station (BNSS s.173(1))
Zero FIR	An FIR registered at a station other than the one with jurisdiction over the place of the offence, then sent to that station
NCR	Non-cognizable report: the register entry for information about a non-cognizable offence, whose informant is referred to a magistrate (BNSS s.174)
Cognizable offence	An offence for which the police may arrest without a warrant, as the BNSS First Schedule classifies it
Preliminary enquiry	A check of up to 14 days, with a DSP-rank officer's permission, before registering an FIR for offences punishable with three to seven years (BNSS s.173(3))
Chargesheet	The police report sent to the magistrate when the investigation finds that an offence was committed, naming the accused
Closure report	The police report sent to the magistrate when the investigation finds no case; the magistrate accepts it or orders further investigation
Cognizance	A magistrate's formal taking notice of an offence on a police report, which starts the court case (BNSS s.210(1)(b))
Remand	A court order keeping an arrested person in police or judicial custody
Default bail	Bail an accused is entitled to when no chargesheet is filed within 60 or 90 days of the first remand (BNSS s.187(3))
Quash	A High Court order setting aside an FIR
Case diary	The investigating officer's day-by-day record of the investigation (BNSS s.192)
Malkhana	A police station's property room, where seized evidence is kept
Link officer	The magistrate who handles a court's new matters while its presiding magistrate is on leave

People and institutions

Term	Meaning
SHO	Station house officer: the officer in charge of a police station
IO	Investigating officer of a case
Duty officer	The front-desk officer who receives complaints and registers FIRs
DSP, ACP	Deputy Superintendent of Police, Assistant Commissioner of Police: supervising ranks
JMFC	Judicial Magistrate First Class
CPC	Central project coordinator: court staff who handle a court's technical set-up
FSL	Forensic Science Laboratory
Registrar	The official of an institution who enrols other officials' phones in person and keeps its roster
MSP administrator	The administrator of an institution's Fabric membership, who alone can create its registrars
NIC	National Informatics Centre
NBF	National Blockchain Framework, the government's blockchain platform ("Vishvasya")
NCRB, SCRB	National and State Crime Records Bureaux

Government systems

Term	Meaning
CCTNS	Crime and Criminal Tracking Network and Systems: the police's FIR register, which stays the legal register in the pilot
ICJS	Interoperable Criminal Justice System, linking police, courts, prisons and forensics
eCourts, CIS, CNR	The courts' case information system, and the Case Number Record it assigns to each case
e-Sakshya	The system for recording search, seizure and statement media as evidence
e-Forensics, FSL LIMS	Forensic laboratories' case management systems
DigiLocker, Meri Pehchaan	The government's document wallet and its national single sign-on, used to prove a citizen's identity
eSign, ESP	A legally valid electronic signature by Aadhaar OTP, issued by a CCA-licensed eSign service provider
AUA/KUA, OVSE	Agencies licensed to request Aadhaar authentication or e-KYC, and an entity registered to verify Aadhaar offline
DLT	TRAI's distributed-ledger registry of SMS senders and message templates
CERT-In	The Indian Computer Emergency Response Team, whose directions set log retention and incident reporting
GIGW	Guidelines for Indian Government Websites

Blockchain and technology

Term	Meaning
Hyperledger Fabric	The permissioned blockchain platform DigiFIR runs on
Channel	A private ledger shared by a set of organisations; DigiFIR has one, firnational
Peer	A node that keeps a copy of the ledger, runs chaincode and endorses transactions
Orderer	A node that puts endorsed transactions into blocks; DigiFIR has three, using Raft
Raft, SmartBFT	Consensus methods for the ordering service: Raft tolerates crashed nodes, SmartBFT also dishonest ones
MSP	Membership service provider: the definition of an organisation's identities on the network
Fabric CA	The certificate authority each organisation runs to issue its identities
Chaincode	A smart contract on Fabric; DigiFIR has four
Endorsement	Peers of named organisations running a transaction and signing its result; an endorsement policy says whose signatures are needed
World state	The current value of every ledger key, kept in CouchDB on each peer
Private data collection	Data shared only among member organisations' peers; other peers keep only its hash
Transient data	Data sent to endorsing peers with a proposal but never written into a block
Gateway identity	The Fabric identity through which the backend submits transactions for an institution; it carries no authority of its own
Signed action	A JSON object describing one change, signed on the actor's device; the only way to change a DigiFIR record
Gate 1, Gate 2	The chaincode's check of who is acting (signature, role, jurisdiction), and Fabric's check of who agrees (endorsement)
DID	Decentralised identifier: a citizen's identifier on the ledger, derived from their first device key and carrying no personal data
Device key	An ECDSA P-256 key made in a phone's secure hardware, which never leaves the phone
ES256	ECDSA signatures over SHA-256 with the P-256 curve
Canonical JSON (JCS)	RFC 8785: one exact byte encoding of a JSON value, so a signature or hash means the same everywhere
NFC	Unicode Normalisation Form C, applied to all text before signing
UUIDv7	A time-ordered unique identifier, used for action and record IDs
HSM, PKCS#11	Hardware security module, and the standard interface software uses to sign with keys held in it
Projector	The backend process that turns ledger blocks into read models
Read model	A database table built from the ledger for fast lists and searches; it holds no personal data
SSE	Server-sent events: the stream through which the apps learn of changes
Hint	An advisory link between two cases that may be the same incident
RIVAL number	The reference given to a complaint kept for a magistrate as a probable duplicate
Anchor	A ledger record linking a case to an outside system's reference, such as a CCTNS FIR number; also a creation guard key in the chaincode
Erasure	The governed purge of private values under a court order or statutory rule, keeping their hashes