Mumbai Police is planning to equip its personnel with the body cameras attached to their uniform to track offences and violence against law-enforcers and traffic law violators.
It will first be piloted in Mumbai. Once successful, the equipment will be extended to other cities in the state, a senior Home Department official was quoted as saying by IANS.
Home Department has invited quotations from several companies for these cameras, which will be light-weight and virtually invisible. The cameras will also have Wi-Fi, GPS and Bluetooth capabilities to quickly transmit data of various incidents to the concerned departments.
This is not the first time that body camera has been used. A few years ago, the state government had to abandon the programme after it faced technical glitches.
The development was initiated in 2017, when on-duty policeman Vilas Shinde was brutally attacked by two unidentified men, when asked to show their vehicle documents and driving license near Bandra in August 2016. Shinde, later died, succumbing to his injuries.
Thi is to detect and curb such incidents of attacks on police personnel, public emergencies, violence or traffic violations. Besides helping police personnel in their routine duties like road-blocks, it could also serve as evidence in future disputes involving police personnel vis-a-vis public and subsequently deter law-breakers, added the official.
Meanwhile, Entrackr's queries regarding the development to Mumbai Police are awaited.
This is not the first such instance by any department, to install cameras to track incidents, in the country.
Earlier in January, the Indian Railways said to install modern surveillance systems in all the trains in the next two years. It is planning to equip 11,000 trains and 8,500 stations with 12 lakh CCTV cameras. The department will soon begin the procurement of equipment to increase the safety around the rail premises.
At present, there are about 395 stations and about 50 trains that are equipped with CCTV systems. The Railways will make a provision of around Rs 3,000 crore in its budget for 2018-19 to install CCTV systems.
Last week, Chandigarh traffic police had reportedly kicked off installing Automatic Speed Gun Cameras with digital displays for traffic management. Digital speed cameras are equipped with night vision technology and will record the speed of oncoming traffic, which will help the city’s police to issue challans to defaulters.