DailyPost 2794
OF CCTVs & VIDEO FOOTAGES
We live in a world of videos. If you were to compare our video consumption today to five years back, we will get wonderstruck. This is the manner we have been sucked into videos, even without realising the tectonic transition. We find videos of things/incidents, which we thought couldn’t have ever been recorded. Videos are thus the main communication medium of the day. When everything seems to be recorded, the omnipresent CCTV networks are recording every movement / action that is happening; public and private networks, churning out the ultimate evidence of the day.
CCTV with its eagle’s eyes is a force multiplier for the police. Its preventive, dynamic / real time enforcement capability and post mortem / evidence dimension of every incident, accident or crime, takes it to a very different level in the field of policing. In a world of videos it is imperative that the evidence will also come through the same medium. Videos have provided clinching evidence in a variety of cases. They have become an ultimate tool for traffic regulation and also checking and challaning traffic violations. However much we flaunt this tool for its technological capabilities Its usage on the ground has left lots to be desired and nothing great has been happening in that regard, but for recklessly adding cameras.
The criticality of video footages both as an effective investigative tool and as clinching evidence does not need any further substantiation in the Prajwal Revanna case. In the recent Swati Maliwal case in Delhi, where the scene of offence is CM’s residence, the CCTV footage may have been tampered with. In the remand note, police have said a portion of the footage from CCTV cameras at the CM’s residence is blank. Time and again, the courts have found footages missing or the CCTV camera not working. In 2022 Mumbai High Court had directed Maharashtra CS to take stern action against officers of police stations who have failed to comply with the 2020 Supreme Court ruling to install CCTV cameras and maintain recordings with regular backups.
The court found the compliance given to SC order as farce. Have CCTVs become a tech tool of ornamental value? If in the above case authentic footage is not made available for investigation, then given the facts of the case, the most important piece of evidence goes missing. If this is the case of police stations and CM’s residence, about other places the less said the better. We are allowing all unscrupulous elements to play around with evidence critical to our judicial proceedings, from the recording level itself. India needs a separate law for handling CCTV, video footages, video analytics, video forensics, with clear cut legal mandate on the nature of technology, recording, audit, storage et al. With this in place video evidence would find its right place in the investigation and trial, ending up in the conviction. A state of art National Video Analytics and Forensics Laboratory is the need of the hour.
VIDEO EVIDENCE CAN LEAD THE WAY IN CRIMINAL INVESTIGATION TODAY.
Sanjay Sahay
Have a nice evening.