Incidents like digging for ancient hidden treasures or breaking into temples for money and jewellery donated by devotees have constituted the bulk of the attacks on temples in Anantapur and Kurnool districts.
Police teams have been keeping a tighter vigil at the majority of vulnerable religious structures, but as it was not a lasting solution, a quick survey of religious structures was conducted in both districts to assess the functioning of CCTV cameras.
In Anantapur district, there are over 11,000 temples of all categories. CCTV cameras were installed at 1,806 religious places from September last year, according to sources. The police are serving notices on those that are yet to install the CCTV cameras.
Kurnool police identified 3,762 religious places that need to install CCTV cameras and of them, only 1,090 had been installed till January 14.
“We are serving notices on managements of all the temples and religious places to install CCTV cameras to comply with the provisions of the Andhra Pradesh Public Safety (Measures) Enforcement Act, 2013,” Superintendent of Police B. Satya Yesu Babu told The Hindu .
All the trusts managing the religious places of worship would be given only one more week to comply with the police request.
Like Mr. Yesu Babu, his Kurnool district counterpart Fakkeerappa Kaginelli had been on the streets at night enthusing his staff to keep a strict vigil at places of worship. This bore fruit and no incidents were reported from both the districts for one week.
The Anantapur police had been keeping a check on the spread of false, anti-religious news, and misinformation campaign in social media on attacks on religious places through its IT wing.
Bhramarambha Mallikarjuna Swamy Devasthanam at Srisailam in Kurnool district has one of the most robust networks of CCTV cameras in this region with 276 of them installed on the campus at all vantage points. Even the ticket fraud detection in the temple was possible partially due to CCTV footage, said police.
