Students design solutions to aid cops at Hackathon

Panaji: A total of 134 students from different colleges participated in a 48-hour-long hackathon held to tackle nine real-world policing problems. Hackathon 2025 focused on enhancing investigation capabilities of Goa police using AI tools.

Students designed solutions for smart patrolling, detection of deepfake videos, synthetic voices and fraudulent online content, assisting visitors at police stations, e-bandobast, CCTV and digital media forensic analyses, scrutiny of data from the 112 helpline and investigation of sexual offences.

Goa police said that wherein it involves investigation of sexual offences, it is looking to develop an AI-driven assistance to provide officers with “case-specific investigation steps by referring to SOPs, legal provisions (under the BNS, Pocso and IT Acts), model chargesheets and predefined checklists relevant to sexual offences” among other features.

“Among the other significant AI tools, the police are looking for is a reliable verification system for night patrolling and nakabandi duties, a system for the detection of synthetic voices and voice-based impersonation (especially in prisons), and a cyber-patrolling system to track, identify and flag fraudulent and illegal online content targeting residents and tourists in Goa,” they said.

In all, 36 teams were selected to develop prototypes for any one of the nine ‘problem statements’. The teams submitted the designed prototypes to the police at the venue. The winning teams in each of the nine categories will be awarded cash prizes of Rs 50,000.