BMC to inspect CCTV cameras in hospitals

Though all civic hospitals were brought under CCTV coverage following the Bombay High Court’s guidelines in May 2009, the recent incidents of baby thefts has brought to light that all cameras are not in a proper working condition. Two out of 12 CCTVs installed at VN Desai Municipal hospital in Santacruz, where a two-month-old infant was abducted in October, were out of order. Moreover, the police complained of poor quality of footage that had made it difficult for them to nab the culprit.

Deputy municipal commissioner Chandrashekhar Rokde, in charge of security at all municipal hospitals, said that following the HC’s guidelines, the civic body had hurriedly installed CCTVs in all hospitals but had not got the chance to go back and check if they were installed properly and working fine. According to BMC’s security department, peripheral hospitals have 10-15 cameras while the three major hospitals attached with medical colleges have between 20-25 cameras installed.

“We will now carry out a physical inspection of all these cameras to make sure that they are in proper working condition. In some cases, the positioning of the cameras have got disturbed while in others, the cameras have stopped working altogether. We will repair dysfunctional cameras and identify other strategic locations in the hospital premises where there is a need to fix a CCTV camera,” said Rokade. 

The court framed the guidelines last May, following the theft of the new born son of Mohan Nerurkar, a city resident from Sion Hospital, run by the BMC. On November 16, a baby was stolen from a maternity home in Shivaji Nagar in Govandi.

The current technology stores CCTV footage for seven days which gets automatically deleted from the system after that. The BMC will also upgrade this technology to make the system store the footage for a longer time, Rokade added.