KOCHI: Even as the Kochi city police intensify night patrols and vehicle checks under Operation Toofan, investigators are struggling to trace suspect vehicles in several cases after losing seamless access to archived footage from around 400 Smart City surveillance cameras.
The cloud service agreement for the network expired on December 31, 2025, and remains unrenewed. Police sources said some of the city’s crucial Automatic Number Plate Recognition (ANPR) cameras are also non-functional, further weakening the surveillance system.
The surveillance network, installed under the Smart City project and maintained by Cochin Smart Mission Limited (CSML), has been a key policing tool for monitoring traffic, tracking suspect vehicles and aiding criminal investigations. However, with the cloud storage agreement lapsing more than six months ago, police officers have been forced to increasingly depend on CCTV footage from private establishments.
According to senior police officers, the disruption has begun affecting investigations into accidents, vehicle thefts and other crimes where tracing the movement of vehicles is crucial. Sources said police teams faced difficulties in some recent cases while trying to identify the registration numbers of suspect vehicles, as archived footage from the police surveillance network was not readily accessible.
“In many cases, we are almost entirely depending on CCTV footage from private buildings,” a senior police officer, requesting anonymity, said. “Ideally, investigators should be able to retrieve footage from the control room itself through the police surveillance network. Instead, officers have to visit different locations, identify camera owners and manually collect footage. Valuable time is lost during the crucial initial stages of an investigation.”
Officials said relying on private CCTV cameras is not a sustainable solution, as the police have no control over whether the cameras are functioning properly or how long the footage is retained before it is overwritten.
Police sources said the problem has assumed greater significance at a time when Operation Toofan has led to intensified night patrols and vehicle inspections across the city. While additional personnel have been deployed on the ground, officers believe the absence of a fully functional surveillance network has reduced the effectiveness of technology-assisted policing.
The situation is compounded by the failure of some ANPR cameras, which are designed to automatically capture and identify vehicle registration numbers. Officials said these cameras play a crucial role in tracing suspect vehicles involved in crimes and hit-and-run accidents.
According to police sources, restoring the cloud storage facility and the associated maintenance would require an expenditure of over `7 crore for a year. Senior officers said the amount cannot be met from the city police’s existing resources and would require intervention from the state government.
While senior police officials maintained that efforts are under way to resolve the issue, several officers admitted there is no clarity on when the cloud storage service will be restored.
Vehicle tracing hit
Disruption affects probe into accidents, vehicle thefts where tracing movement of vehicles is crucial
Some of city’s Automatic Number Plate Recognition (ANPR) cameras also non-functional, cops say
