Kol Police Commissioner to expand city's CCTV camera coverage

Kolkata: Kolkata Police are about to install more CCTV cameras across the city to increase vigilance in order to prevent and detect crimes.

On Saturday, Kolkata Police Commissioner Anuj Sharma said: "At present, more than 3,000 CCTV cameras are active across the city. We are increasing the number and installing advanced CCTV cameras equipped with Face Recognition System (FRS)."

Sharma informed that earlier, in many cases, CCTV cameras have played crucial role in preventing crimes as well as detecting crimes and criminals.

In many cases, police faced difficulties while identifying a crime or criminals due to the poor quality of CCTV footages. Sharma, in this regard, stated that some CCTV cameras are old but all of those are still in working condition. "Old cameras are working and providing footages. But we are continuously developing infrastructure and introducing Artificial Intelligence to improve the quality of the output. It is an ongoing process. Installing CCTV cameras help to prevent crime as it keeps reminding the person who is about to commit a crime that he or she is being watched," added Sharma.

Apart from monitoring the city through cameras, the CP stated that now-a-days, committing a crime through the Internet has become very easy as technique of hacking, call routing and other procedures to hide the criminal's identity can be learnt through popular search engines.

"In case of cyber crime, the offenders do not need their presence which is more critical. Also, due to easy availability of information on how to commit a cyber crime, people are becoming more and more vulnerable," he further said.

According to cyber experts, investigating a cyber crime case is tougher than solving a classic crime as it has no boundaries.

Earlier, approximately 26,000 cases registered with the London Police had been solved after Kolkata Police busted two rackets of online fraud in the city.

Police also face problem while gathering information as agencies like WhatsApp, Facebook and other social media platforms do not respond promptly.

However, Sharma stated that it may take a bit more time to solve such cases where social media platforms are involved but criminals will not be spared.