While talking to Newsline, the Deputy Superintendent of Police (Wireless and Communication), Roshan Lal, said, “The technical snags in CCTVs are not very common. However, we do receive complaints of CCTVs not working. In the case of Sector 31 police station, we had received the complaint quite late.

“On checking, it was found that the cameras were not functional from January 1 evening till January 2. We rectified the error. At present, there is only Manimajra police station, where the CCTV has developed a technical snag that shall be rectified shortly.”

Sources disclosed that to hide their activities, the police station staff switches off the CCTVs and do not report it to the Police Control Room. To deal with such problems, the technical wing of the UT Police are also contemplating of providing direct connections to CCTVs to prevent mishandling of cameras by police station staff.

“It is the responsibility of the Station House Officer to see that the CCTVs function properly. In case the SHO fails to notice it, we have asked all the duty-operators to thoroughly check the CCTVs before they start their duty-shift. Three duty-operators have been put on routine duty at police stations to do an eight-hour shift on a daily basis,” DSP Roshan Lal added.

CCTVs have played significant role in various cases, where the police had faced allegations of ‘exceeding’ their jurisdiction.