Monday, August 15, 2022

No high-resolution CCTV cameras for five key police wings

While the Chandigarh Smart City Ltd, which has already installed the 604 cameras at 17 police stations, says it is working as per the “requirement of the UT Police”, information accessed through an RTI query revealed that three of the said five wings have their own cameras that were installed years ago.

Written by Saurabh Parashar | Chandigarh |
June 29, 2022 6:13:45 am

CCTVs installed outside a Chandigarh police station

Five-key wings of the UT Police, including the Cyber Crime Investigation Cell (CCIC) and Economic Offenses Wing (EOW), are not in the list of locations chosen for installing high resolution CCTV cameras.

While the Chandigarh Smart City Ltd, which has already installed the 604 cameras at 17 police stations, says it is working as per the “requirement of the UT Police”, information accessed through an RTI query revealed that three of the said five wings have their own cameras that were installed years ago.

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The five wings — Crime Branch, Sector 11; Operations Cell, Sector 26; District Crime Investigation Cell (DCIC), Sector 24; CCIC, Sector 17; and EOW, Sector 17 — work independently and are mainly tasked to curb the organised crime.

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General Manager, Smart City, NP Sharma, said, “We installed the CCTV cameras as per the requirement of the Chandigarh Police. The police department sends us its requirement with the location. Almost all the installed CCTV cameras have started working”.

In reply to an RTI query filed by The Indian Express, police department revealed that the EOW already has four CCTV cameras while the Crime Branch has two. It further revealed that though no independent camera was installed at the Operations Cell, which keeps a tab on terror activities, certain cameras installed at the Sector 26 police station covers the wing. Similarly, the recently constituted DCIC lacks independent CCTV cameras. The reply revealed that five cameras installed at Sector 24 police post covers the premises of DCIC.

Incidentally, the RTI filed by The Indian Express had also found that a total of 157 CCTV cameras installed across various police stations and posts in Chandigarh had developed 13,699 faults in the last five year.

The RTI reply had also revealed that in stark contrast to the above, at least 18 cameras installed at the office of Director General of Police (DGP) (UT), Praveer Ranjan, Senior Superintendent of Police (SSP) (UT) Kuldeep Singh Chahal, and other parts of the police headquarters in Sector 9 have not reported a single fault in the last five years.

At least eight CCTV cameras are installed in the office of Ranjan and nine in the office of Chahal.

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