LUCKNOW: With multiple incidents of dreaded gangsters running their empire of crime from inside jails coming to the fore, the Uttar Pradesh government has bolstered the vigilance system by installing CCTVs equipped with Artificial Intelligence (AI) in five high-security prisons to keep a tight vigil on criminals.
The probe into the Umesh Pal murder case has revealed how the assailants, including gangster-politician Atiq Ahmed’s son Asad and his accomplices, had met the conspirator Khalid Azeem aka Ashraf in Bareilly jail with impunity to give final touches to the plot. They executed the plot by killing Umesh Pal in broad daylight in front of his residence in Dhumanganj locality of Prayagraj on February 24.
The investigation into the killing also revealed how gangster Atiq Ahmed, who was lodged in Sabarmati jail in Gujarat, used to be in constant touch with his brother Ashraf in Bareilly jail and his henchmen in Prayagraj through group video calls to run his racket of extortion, abduction, intimidation and murder from inside the jail.
In the wake of such findings, highly-placed state government sources said that on the instructions of CM Yogi Adityanath, five high-security jails of the state have been provided with AI-equipped CCTVs along with dual view baggage scanners, full body scanners, contactless glasses for meeting rooms and many devices equipped with new technology.
The prison department had sent a proposal in this regard to the authorities following which the CM convened a high-level meeting to remove the lacunae in the jail vigilance system and released the budget to the Prison Administration and Reforms Department.
Moreover, video conferencing halls have also been set up to hold court proceedings through video conferencing to ensure security of the undertrials. So far, 145 such video conferencing halls in 72 prisons and 73 district courts have been established.
With this, five dual view baggage scanners, five full body scanners, 130 contact less glasses for meeting rooms, five panic alarm systems, 15 Night Vision Binoculars and 5 Lighting Protection System ESE units have also been set up in five high security jails including Lucknow District Jail, Azamgarh, Chitrakoot, Gautam Budh Nagar and Central Jail Bareilly-II.
According to a senior officer from the prison department, along with the CCTV surveillance units, at least 30 cameras have been installed at sensitive spots in the prisons. At present, more than 3600 CCTV cameras have been installed in all the jails of the state. Not only this, the work of increasing the number of these cameras, restoration of cameras and arrangement of servers including storage in 30 prisons has also been completed.
After receiving the feed of the CCTV cameras installed in the prisons of the state, a command centre has been set up for high-level monitoring at the headquarters. The live feeds from the cameras installed in the various prisons are received on the video wall in the headquarters. So far, over 1200 cameras have been integrated with the video wall which gets alerts through the Artificial Intelligence (AI) system.