CHENNAI: City-based NGO ChangeIndia has moved the Madras High Court seeking to initiate contempt of court proceeding against the Tamil Nadu DGP and home secretary for failing to ensure installation and proper functioning of CCTV cameras in police stations and availability of the recordings as directed by the High Court in 2015.
The NGO in its plea also sought the High Court to fix accountability for non-functioning or non-availability of recordings. Even in the Sathankulam case, CCTV footage was not available or destroyed, it claimed.
The counsel for the petitioner sought for the court to direct the state to file a detailed report on the measures adopted in police stations.
Rejecting the contempt plea, a division bench of Justices TS Sivagnanam and V Bhavani Subbaroyan observed that contempt proceedings cannot be initiated since the petition is based on information already available in the public domain.
"Only one instance of Sathankulam mentioned by the petitioner is not ample to initiate contempt proceedings," observed the court.
The court, however, agreed to hear a revised petition moved by the petitioner on the same issue, which is already waiting to be numbered.
According to the petitioner A Narayanan, the Madras High Court in an order on April 24, 2015, stated that CCTVs will be installed in police stations in a phased manner in the next five years. The order said three cameras will be installed covering the reception area, hall, and lockups, and the recording facility will be available in DVR recorders (Digital video recorders). The cameras will have night vision capabilities, uninterrupted power supply, and the recordings will be saved for future reference. However, nothing much was implemented, it alleged.
The bench observed that the entire issue has to be looked at seriously and requires examination of the entire measures adopted by the state as part of police modernisation. The bench directed the government counsel to also assist in numbering the review plea from the high court registry.