Beware! You are under CCTV surveillance on Western Rly

In 2021, the high-tech CCTVs helped in arresting 125 accused, with highest 72 of them nabbed in Mumbai Central division

In the year 2021, as many as 125 accused were arrested by the Railway Protection Force (RPF ) of the Western Railway (WR) for their alleged involvement in 94 cases. The culprits could be nabbed owing to the cobweb of 2,729 modern CCTV cameras spanning 30 WR’s stations, right from from Churchgate to the farthest end of Virar.

Of 2,729 cameras, 450 of them are equipped with face recognition system and over 500 have the video analysis feature. These computerized hawk eyes are monitored through seven control centres at Churchgate, Dadar, Andheri, Bhayandar, Borivali, Virar and Andheri.

Loaded with tech-savvy features like high-end video analytics and 30 days footage storage capacity, these CCTVs has aided in widening the ambit of law enforcement as the number of cases detected with the help of cameras shot up by over 400 per cent in 2021 as compared to 2020. Two years ago, just 16 cases of theft of passengers’ belongings and other crimes could be detected and equal number of accused were arrested back then.

Whereas in 2021, a total of 94 cases, which occurred in the premises of WR, could be solved with the help of CCTVs. In both the years, most of the incidents happened in the Mumbai Central division, with 66 of them taking place last year.

While the remaining 17 cases were detected in Ratlam division, 6 in Vadodara division, 4 in Ahmedabad division and lone case in Rajkot division in 2021.

“In 2021, a total of 125 accused were arrested by the WR RPF with the help of newly-installed state-of-theart CCTV cameras. While only 16 accused were arrested in 16 cases of the last year,” apprised a WR official.

“Like 2020, in 2021 also maximum 72 arrests were made in Mumbai Central division,” an official said, adding that 32 accused were arrested in Ratlam, 15 in Vadodara, 5 in Ahmedabad and one accused arrested in Rajkot division, thanks to CCTV cameras.

Explaining about the efficiency of new CCTVs, an official stated, “Feed of new cameras is more clear than old system. Apart from that, it also has the capacity of working on partial occlusion of face, glasses, scarfs, facial expression changes, etc."

The new system also has capabilities of working on moderate face rotation, either horizontal or vertical as well as matching suspect faces from pre-recorded video feeds obtained from CCTVs deployed at various locations.

“Apart from that, it can add photographs obtained from law enforcement agencies to the criminals’ repositories along with details such as sex of the person, age, and identification marks such as scars and tattoos for future searches if needed,” an official mentioned.