Investigation delays due to poor functioning of CCTVs: Top cop
HYDERABAD: Blame the lack of maintenance by service providers or lackadaisical attitude of various residents’ welfare associations, a number of Closed Circuit Televisions (CCTVs) cameras installed at different places in the city are not working properly leading to delay in investigation. The Hyderabad police have initiated the plan as pilot project in installing CCTVs at all the nooks and corners of the city in an attempt to keep a close watch on the anti-social elements and to identify the criminal activities. The police officials had also set a target of installing 1 lakh CCTVs across the city and crossed its figure with the assistance of various companies under Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) and involvement of colony associations.
The Additional Commissioner of Police, administration, Murali Krishna said that there is mammoth response from the public and they joined hands with the city police in installing CCTVs at their colonies. “Initially, we planned one lakh CCTVs across the city, however, the figure has touched 1.30 lakh cameras now. All these cameras are interlined to the command control in Basheerabgh to keep track of movements in the city,’’ additional commissioner of police said.
Further, he stated that city police have installed 10,000 CCTVs while more than 90,000 CCTVs have been installed with the assistance by public and corporate firms. However, a number of cameras have failed due to lack of regular maintenance while some cameras are functioning improperly, capturing blur footage. For instance: on October 23, a three day old baby boy, born ill-health, was kidnapped by a woman near the Niloufer hospital by a woman.
The Nampally police using CCTVs footage tracked the miscreant’s movements. A number of CCTVs were found not to be working properly and that caused delay in identifying the whereabouts of the miscreants and also death of kidnapped baby boy due to ill-health. The senior officials asked the colony associations to take measures in verifying the installed CCTVs properly. West Zone, a highest number 35,000 CCTVs have been installed followed by North Zone has more than 25,000, Central Zone, South and East Zones have around 20,000 to 23,000 CCTVs.