Simply put: How Gujarat Police’s projects will fight crime

As part of VISWAS – Video Integration and State Wide Advanced Security – over 7,000 CCTV cameras are being installed at traffic junctions, entry and exit points and other strategic locations in 41 cities of Gujarat. The camera footage will be manned in a pyramid style structure starting from a state command and control centre at the top, which will control 34 District Command and Control Centres, which in turn have the responsibility of manning the CCTV cameras in their respective districts. The CCTV cameras will be synchronized in order to, for example, live watch CCTV feed of Dang or Amreli from Gandhinagar Control Center.

What are the objectives?

Through a synchronised system of CCTV surveillance, the police aim to use it for crime detection with forensic analysis of the evidence. As told by Union Home Minister Amit Shah on Saturday, “if any CCTV feed of crime incident or an evidence is available with the local police in far off areas, that feed can be sent immediately to the Central Command and Control Centre which in turn can submit the feed to Forensic Science Laboratory (FSL) and the investigating officer of the case can receive immediate opinion of experts. The police also aim to achieve a pro-active traffic management system by identifying the black spots and bottleneck junctions of a city through CCTV feed. It will also help the police in issuing e-challan in even Tier 2 and Tier 3 cities by identifying the number plate of offending vehicles.

What is special about installation of CCTV cameras?

These are not regular CCTV cameras but state of the art gadgets such as fix cameras, pan-tilt zoom cameras, red-light violation detection cameras and automatic number plate recognition cameras. With the global standard analytical tools, Gujarat Police is aiming at introducing CCTV surveillance system to detect illegal parking, traffic violation, crowd detection, unattended bag detection, head counting, camera tampering and intrusion detection.

What are the resources and manpower involved in this project?

According to an estimate provided by Gujarat Police, over 1,500 personnel are being trained which will be completed in three levels and over 250 technical staff will assist the police in this project.

What is the future of this project?

Gujarat Police aims at integrating the CCTV surveillance system with all 600+ police stations in the state along with integration with toll plaza, Regional Transport Office check posts and Border Check posts. The Phase-2 of Viswas intends to cover over 120 cities in the state

What is Cyber AASHVAST?

It is an initiative started by the Cyber Crime Cell of the Gujarat Police where multiple units will be made to categorically deal with different kinds of online crimes such as financial crimes, identity theft and even online bullying and harassment

What are the units in Cyber AASHVAST?

There are four units which include ‘Incident Response Unit’, ‘Cyber Suraksha Lab, Cyber Crime Prevention Unit and ‘Anti Cyber Bullying Unit’. In cases of financial crimes, time is an essential factor and in that regard, the Incident Response Unit has been made which is a 24×7 basis available team, ready to deal with online financial crimes such as money deducted through OTP sharing, fraud through UPI link, fraud without OTP, card cloning and phishing. For now, the helpline number is 100, which redirects to this team and for the seven newly made districts of Gujarat, it is 112.

Similarly, the Cyber Suraksha Lab will be a dedicated space for the citizens where they can take help of kiosks to find out if their phone has been hacked or is a victim of malware.

The Cyber Crime Prevention Unit is an online portal which will contain database of thousands of phone numbers and website links that have been suspected of being involved in financial crimes so that the citizens can aware themselves and stay alert.

The Cyber Anti-bullying Unit deals with cases of online stalking, harassment, bullying, using morphed pictures, sexual harassment and has a dedicated team of police personnel and counsellors to help the victims, while retaining their confidentiality. The helpline number is 100.

What other initiatives are part of Cyber AASHVAST

The Gujarat Police through Cyber AASHVAST has started a portal called Cyber Crime Co-operation Investigation Request Portal where any state police or law enforcement agency can access and submit details about any offender staying in Gujarat. The case will be immediately transferred to Cyber Crime Cell of Gujarat which will then deal with the case.