A 3rd 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. He says,
"I know what it is to stand in a queue to file something, to ask around for legal aid and to come back on the date given only to find that the matter never came on board. I know what it is to wait for a notice that was not served on time and to wonder who is actually responsible when it is not.
For a long time, my answer to all this was patience and a lot of running around. Then I decided to build something small that would at least take one burden off my shoulders," Shirsat told Bar & Bench.
The tool needs only the CNR - the unique number given to every case on the eCourts system. It then 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 that 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, however, 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 has invited students and developers to help improve it or add configurations for other courts.