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Andhra Pradesh: Security check goes on a toss with poor quality cameras

Recognising suspects difficult with low quality footage.

Visakhapatnam: While 70 per cent of the identified private establishments are yet to come under surveillance system, the effectiveness of the already installed CCTV security cameras at other premises is raising severe concerns.

The poor quality of the CCTV cameras is coming to light whenever they do not give a worthwhile result when it comes to recognising suspects captured in the footage.

The recent acid attack incident involving the city-based doctor Balaji Bhushan Patnaik has also exposed ineffectiveness of the security cameras as the Forensic Science Laboratory also could not decipher anything from the footage captured by a CCTV camera installed on residential premises. The identification of the suspects would have helped to crack the case and nab the culprit easily.

Bringing the public places under the CCTV camera surveillance was initiated in the city to comply with the rules under AP Public Safety (Measures) Enforcement Act-2013. However, about 70 percent of 1,000 various establishments identified by the police administration is yet to install the surveillance system.

The management of the commercial establishments, educational institutions, sports complexes, banks, religious places, bus stations, cinema theaters, hotels, industrial units, lodges, guest houses among others and had been asked to fix CCTV cameras and make arrangement to store video footage of a minimum of 30 days and make it available for inspection as and when required.

Moreover, only out of 120 traffic junctions, only 47 junctions are equipped with the CCTV cameras.

“The functioning of the installed CCTV cameras by the civic body should be audited regular interval by a third agency. Moreover, whenever some crime takes place, the residential apartments show interest, but they never care to call the technicians and check whether they are functioning or not. So, the cameras would nowhere serve the purpose,” said M Raghu, a technician of Smart Technology providing CCTV installation service.

( Source : Deccan Chronicle. )
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