Eye on safety: Navi Mumbai stations to get 240 more CCTVs

After the sexual assault at Turbhe railway station which took place on Thursday, the railways will install more cameras in six months.

In view of the increasing crime rate in suburban trains and platforms, the Central Railway (CR) has decided to install 240 additional closed-circuit television (CCTV) cameras at Navi Mumbai railway stations.

A CCTV camera installed at Turbhe Railway Station. (Bachchan Kumar/HT)

The topic of CCTV cameras at stations came to the fore after a 43-year-old man was caught on camera, forcefully kissing a female commuter at Turbhe stationin Mumbai on Thursday.

Navi Mumbai has 15 railway stations on the Harbour and Trans-harbour line. Presently, each station has 32 to 48 CCTV cameras installed on their premises.

“It has been observed that the existing cameras are not sufficient to cover all major areas of the stations. We had conducted a survey to find out the requirement and have decided to install 240 cameras at these stations,” said a railway engineer, requesting anonymity.

“Installation of the cameras will be started within a few weeks. It will take around six months for every station to get the additional cameras,” he said.

Vashi is a major railway station in Navi Mumbai with a footfall of around 60,000 every day. “We now have 48 CCTV cameras installed on our station premises. But the station is so big that these cameras cannot cover all the areas. For example, there are no cameras in staircases and in the two subways that connect the platforms. But, these are crucial parts of the station as commuters enter and exit the station through these subways,” said Sudarshan Khurana, station manager, Vashi railway station.

“We have been informed that our station will be provided with 16 more cameras,” he said.

Last year the Vashi Government Railway Police (GRP) registered 219 crimes and detected 126 of them. “The CCTV cameras helped us in detecting many crimes including thefts, robberies and sexual crimes against women. The CCTV footage gave us leads in the case where an MBBS student was looted and thrown out of a moving train near Nerul station in November 2017,” said Suresh Patil, senior police inspector, Vashi GRP.

Panvel railway station is now being converted into a terminus, the first phase of which is likely to be ready by mid-2019. “As of now we are increasing the number of CCTV cameras at Panvel. Once the entire terminus is ready, we will see its requirement and install more cameras accordingly,” another CR official said.