Almost 40% of CCTVs in Telangana non-functional.

Deccan Chronicle: Mauli Mareedu: Hyderabad: Friday, January 24, 2025.

At least 40 per cent of CCTVs installed in the state are not able to record any footage due to various factors, rendering them useless for the intended purpose. Taking advantage of their erratic functioning, and non-availability of any sort of footage, criminals have been escaping the police dragnet. Not monitoring maintenance, storage and power supply issues have led to the systems developing glitches for the past few years.

Meanwhile, after the Congress party came to power, many senior police officials brought the issue to the notice of the government. This led to installing 53,651 new CCTVs, across the state, including in Hyderabad. According to some police ofcials, overall they had installed 11, 64,645 CCTVs at different places, including in villages as part of boosting technology use by the police department, especially to prevent and detect crimes.

Sources said that almost 40 percent of CCTVs are not working properly in the absence of regular maintenance. "When the BRS government was in power, the then police officials had aimed to install 15 lakh CCTVs across the state. But as they were unable to maintain them properly, they exhorted residential colonies, apartments, gated community associations and commercial complexes to install CCTV cameras. This way the police entrusted them with the regular maintenance responsibilities," sources said

Station house officers (SHOs) have strived to take the issue to the notice of residential colony associations. They installed CCTV cameras that are interlinked to the command control rooms in some sensitive locations. However, these CCTVs gradually became defunct for the same non-maintenance reasons. Realising the problem at hand, the new government asked the police department to install new CCTVs. Today, the entire control of these CCTVs is only with the police department.

During a recent review meeting with all SPs and commissioners on law and order issues, the DGP enquired about the functioning and maintenance of CCTVs. "The senior officials were shocked when told by the unit officers that a number of cameras have not been functioning. There was an urgent requirement of funds to either repair the existing ones or for installing new systems. The unit officers were advised to interact with people living in villages, mandal headquarters and residential localities and motivate them to install CCTVs as a deterrent to criminals," sources said.

To cite an instance, a few months back, an elderly couple was found murdered in Amberpet police limits, but the probe was delayed due to lack of CCTV footage. A few years ago, a social worker led a petition before the police officials seeking information about the CCTVs in Hyderabad under Right to Information Act (RTI). It was after several years that the police responded but provided partial information. Sources also said that police officials have installed around 1,500 CCTVs with facial recognition features that can help identify even miscreants who are masked. These cameras have been installed at sensitive places like railway stations, bus stations and prominent hospitals.