Third eye to help policemen

Imagine a spy camera installed at a junction captures images of a car and relays it back to the main server in the police control room, the police swings into action and nabs the criminal!

You must have seen this in films or heard that such technology exists in foreign countries. But this will soon become a reality for the Mumbai police.

The city police will soon have a software, which will with the help of a camera; capture the image of the number plates of vehicles used by criminals or wanted by the police and relay it back to the police control room whenever such vehicle passes below the camera. The police can reach the spot within minutes and intercept the vehicle.

Ten cameras will be installed, as a pilot project, at each of the five toll nakas in the city namely Dahisar, Mulund (west) and (east), Airoli and Mankhurd.

Speaking to DNA, joint commissioner of police (administration), Hemant Karkare explained, “We were thinking to make best use of the CCTV cameras, not only to keep watch on the traffic junctions, but also give us the best possible chance to reach the spot quickly in case of an emergency.

We are in touch with ZICOM (a software company), which will provide us the special software which would be connected with the CCTV cameras.

This software will have a database with the registration numbers of the vehicles used by the criminals and are wanted by the city police.”

“This database will be connected with the server of the main control room. As soon as a vehicle having a registration number wanted by the city police passes within the camera’s range, the camera will zoom in on the vehicle and compare the registration number with the numbers saved in the database.

If it tallies with the vehicles wanted by the police, it will flash the details to the main control room. The main control room will then alert the regional control room or respective police station to follow the vehicle immediately,” added Karkare.

The camera is equipped with tremendous scanning capacity and can identity the registration number plates written in any language. For example, if a registration number plate is in Devnagari or Gujarati script, the camera will still be able to identify the numbers.

“There are around 40,000 different makes of number plates, including regional languages of various states and districts.

This software would have the capacity to read all the languages and the numbers. We expect to install at least 100 CCTV cameras with this software across the city, which will hugely benefit the Mumbai police,” said Karkare.

When asked about the success rate of the software in the future and the date the project would be implemented in a full-fledged manner across the city, Karkare said, “We had conducted a trial with these cameras and the success rate was 90 per cent. The camera managed to track the vehicles having dubious number plates and relayed it back to the control room.”

The software is a costly affair and the Mumbai police will have to cough up a whopping Rs5 crore for it software and the installation charges. “We are selecting the places where we want to install the cameras and are also in touch with BMC to seek their permission.”

Explaining the use of the CCTV cameras of the traffic police Karkare said, “The traffic police do not have this special software.

Earlier, the traffic police used to inform the traffic constable on duty about the numbers plates of the wanted vehicles.

The constable in turn used to keep personal vigil on the vehicles passing from his jurisdiction. But this software will make our job much faster and efficient.”