CCTV surveillance stepped up in State

Emerging cities like Karimnagar, Warangal come under ‘invisible eye’; contributions pour in for cameras in neighbourhoods

Invisible eye: Karimnagar One Town CI Tula Srinivas Rao monitoring CC camera in Karimnagar on Thursday.

Surveillance cameras are turning out to be crucial tools in policing in the State. The citizen is under constant watch of the invisible eye not just in the capital city of Hyderabad, but even in in emerging cities like Karimnagar and Warangal.

From road accidents to kidnaps to thefts, video footage recorded by surveillance cameras have led the police to offenders in the three commissionerates of Hyderabad, Cyberabad and Rachakonda. There is no dearth of examples from the city as to how the video clips are helping track down the offenders.

Now, slowly similar success is being repeated in Karimnagar and Warangal, located 150 km away from Hyderabad.

Replicating success

Till a few months ago, there were no surveillance cameras in these cities. Quality of images of cameras installed by private parties were of low resolution and inferior quality and their number was limited.

Apparently after noticing the ‘results’ of surveillance cameras in Hyderabad, the concept of Community CCTV project was introduced in these cities, too. And, it’s changing the different aspects of policing, be it keeping an eye on maintenance of law and order or probing crimes.

Karimnagar One Town police station Inspector T. Srinivasa Rao, sitting in his room, monitors the happenings on some trunk routes. Recently, high definition cameras were installed at select places on important routes in the police station area.

The moment anything suspicious catches his attention, the Inspector rings up his mobile patrolling teams and directs them to rush to the place. That was not the case earlier. Any first hand information had to reach the Inspector from the patrolling parties since they were on the field.

Realtime monitoring

Even if some persons are seen assembling before the collectorate, he directs the Blue Colt team to rush to the point and ascertain what exactly is happening. “Surely, surveillance cameras are a boon to policing. In some cases, people deny being present at the place of offence. Video footage calls the bluff,” he explains.

More encouraging were the results in Warangal commissionerate. In the past one year, the police — with the support of government and private parties, installed nearly 16,000 cameras at public places. “Statistics suggest that the crime rate has come down by nearly 20 %, chain snatchings were controlled considerably,” Warangal Police Commissioner G. Sudheer Babu says.