Thane Law Student Builds Tool to Download Every Order in a Bombay High Court Case
A third-year law student from Thane has built a tool that downloads every order in a Bombay High Court case using just its CNR number. Vishal Shantaram Shirsat studies at Smt Smita Ravindra Ghodvinde Law College.
Shirsat said he knows what it is to stand in a queue to file something, to ask around for legal aid, and to return on the given date only to find the matter never came on board. He also knows what it is to wait for a notice that was not served on time and to wonder who is responsible when it is not. For long, his answer was patience and a lot of running around. Then he decided to build something small that would take at least one burden off his shoulders.
The tool needs only the CNR, the unique number given to every case on the eCourts system. It finds the case on the Court's website and downloads every order in about a minute. Each file is renamed by date and saved in a folder named with the case number and CNR. Doing this manually once took him nearly an hour.
Shirsat says downloading orders is only half the problem. The other half is understanding how they fit with your own papers, so he added a second feature. He can add his own papers, such as the first information report (FIR) and notices, to the folder. The tool reads them alongside the orders and prepares a basic report. It picks out the case number, parties, judge and dates, and highlights terms such as 'adjourned', 'allowed', 'dismissed', 'notice issued' and 'interim relief'.
Orders usually fix the next hearing date. The tool checks whether an order exists for that date. When a matter is sometimes left off the cause list that day, the tool's report flags the gap, which Shirsat says litigants should raise with the right authority. The tool also highlights mismatches with his own papers. Shirsat stressed that the analysis offers no legal opinion, only a starting point.
The tool is written in Python and runs entirely on his laptop, with no account or outside server. Case papers are confidential, and he therefore does not want other people's names and facts on a third-party service.
He had no programming experience and built the tool with AI's help. The tool still breaks when the court website changes its layout, but building it sharpened his legal thinking, he says.
Shirsat says building the tool has changed how he sees the profession. "The law is not only a body of rules to learn; it is a set of problems to solve," he says, and he has invited students and developers to help improve it or add configurations for other courts.
Source: Barandbench