Closed circuit television (CCTV) cameras installed by the Navi Mumbai Municipal Corporation (NMMC) in the end of 2012, and by City and Industrial Development Corporation of Maharashtra (CIDCO) in 2016, helped the Navi Mumbai police solve as many as 398 cases.
A total of 573 CCTVs have been installed by the authorities, of which 279 were installed by the NMMC in Zone I (Airoli to Belapur) and 294 by CIDCO at Zone II (Kharghar to Panvel).
“The cameras have been installed in important junctions, markets, communally sensitive areas, railway stations and bus stops and those play a major role in detecting crime. Our officers in the command centre are always monitoring the screens, keeping a watch on suspicious activities,” Assistant Commissioner of Police, Pradeep Kannalu said.
When vehicle theft, chain snatching or a hit and run case happens, officers try to figure out the accused by scrutinising footages of nearby areas.
“The investigating officer and our command centre officials study the footages to figure out any suspicious activity that could give us any lead. In the case of the Bank of Baroda heist, the major break through was the car which was found a few metres away from the bank,” Mr. Kannalu said.
Similarly, the dacoity case where ₹2 crore was stolen from a business man’s house in Vashi in 2017, the case of Fayyaz Shaikh who snatched close to 90 chains, serial rapist Rehan Qureshi and many other vehicle and laptop thefts were solved with the help of CCTV footages.
“During the Maratha morcha, the CCTVs were very helpful in monitoring the situation live from the command room,” Mr. Kannalu said.
In case of accidents, the cameras play a major role in identifying the cause. “In December 2012, a car rammed into a trailer perpendicularly on Palm Beach road. Three, who were in the car, died. Prima facie, it looked like the trailer was at fault but after watching the footage, we realised the car driver, was drunk and speeding, while the trailer was crossing the junction at a slow pace,” an officer said.
872 investigations
The CCTV cameras by the NMMC was officially inaugurated in 2013. From December 2012 to December 2018, the total number of CCTV clips demanded by officers from Zone I was 1,619, of which 1,152 were made available by command centre officials. These were helpful in the investigations of 872 cases, of which 300 could be solved only because of the availability of the footage. Meanwhile in Zone II, the CCTV cameras were installed in August 2016 and till December 2018, 377 footages were demanded, of which 312 were made available. These helped in the investigations of 214 cases, of which 98 were solved because of the footages.