52 police stations had no CCTVs till Sept 15: Gangwar

Cuttack: At least 52 police stations across Odisha did not have CCTV cameras till September 15 when an Army officer and his fiancee were allegedly assaulted inside one of the police stations in Bhubaneswar, the Orissa High Court was informed.The alleged incident that sparked off controversy in the State took place when the couple went to Bharatpur police station to lodge a complaint of road rage during which they were reportedly harassed by some youths.

Since there were no CCTV facilities in Bharatpur police station, it could not be immediately ascertained how the matter reached such a stage that the Army man was “tortured” and his fiancee was “sexually assaulted”.However, Bharatpur police station was not the only such facility where the facility was absent.

At least 52 newly-constructed police stations, out of the total 645 in the State, had no CCTV facilities put in place, senior IPS officer Dayal Gangwar said in an affidavit to the Orissa High Court.None of the 295 police outposts of the State had a video surveillance facility, the affidavit said.

However, steps are now being taken to install CCTV surveillance facilities in all the 52 newly constructed police stations, including at Bharatpur police station.

Gangwar, an ADG-rank officer also informed the court that out of the 11,729 cameras installed in 593 police stations of the State since March 2022, at least 2,266 cameras spread across 456 police stations were non-functional due to various reasons as on September 24, 2024. He further informed the court that since the integrated project involved a lot of IT interventions, the State government had decided that the Odisha Computer Academic Centre under the E & IT department of the government would execute the work.

Since the project involved a three-tier supervision, maintenance and supervision, it needed installation of Video Management Software (VMS) at the district level under the control of district Superintendents of Police (SPs) and Central Monitoring System (CMS) at the State level under the Director General of Police (DGP) for seamless monitoring of CCTV surveillance system.

“But due to non-implementation of VMS and CMS systems for lack of requisite internet connectivity, the monitoring and maintenance of the facility was done telephonically in an archaic manner,” Gangwar said in his affidavit.

He, however, informed the High Court that the State government has now decided to work on the modalities of the completion of VMS and CMS system using the existing internet facility.He said by November 15, the restoration work of non-functional cameras would be over and the installation of CCTV cameras in the 52 newly constructed police stations would be completed.