THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: The attack on the AKG Centre and failure of the police to identify the culprit till now has once again brought to fore the pathetic condition of the surveillance system in the city limits. Of about 300 CCTV cameras installed in the city by the police, only half are working.
About 50 cameras have been removed in connection with the implementation of the Smart City project and close to 100 are defunct, rendering the police’s ‘third eye’ almost obsolete. Though CCTV footage collected near the AKG Centre showed a two-wheeler-borne assailant hurling a bomb, the police could not develop that lead since proper footage could not be recovered from other cameras.
The police sources said most of the cameras in the city are old-fashioned as they were installed 10-12 years ago. Compounding the woes, only a few of them are night-vision enabled and they also require street lights to work efficiently. “In areas where there are no street lights, the cameras are of no use during nighttime,” said a senior police officer.
The officer said the team probing the AKG Centre attack could not even identify the registration number of the vehicle in which the assailant travelled. While investigating crimes, the police usually take the help of private CCTV cameras to tide over the difficulty posed by the defunct police cameras. However, in this case, those attempts also failed.
An officer, who is part of the probe team, said most of the private cameras did not have the power to capture images of vehicles travelling on-road or were installed at specific angles so as to cover the premises of residences or offices only. Unfortunately, repairing the police cameras or replacing them is not being considered at present, said an officer.