Mumbai: Good ol’ sleuthing to unmask criminals as Covid marks end of CCTVs

MUMBAI: Back in 1999, when masked robbers sneaked into a Khar flat, attacked two house helps and made off with valuables, CCTVs weren’t commonplace. Investigators uncovered the mystery bit by bit, rounding up suspects, grilling them and attempting to refresh the victims’ memories. One of the helps remembered the attacker’s voice and it eventually matched with that of the society watchman.Cut to 2020. With the pandemic driving everyone to don masks, the Mumbai police’s go-to investigation tool—electronic surveillance cameras—may not be of much help and investigators might just have to go back to using traditional methods.
CCTV footage made a sleuth’s life easier and provided a starting point for the probe. A few years ago, a tea vendor looted three banks of Rs 1 crore after studying the positions of cameras inside. But the cameras outside Ghatkopar’s Canara Bank, which he targeted last, had captured him along with a keymaker. Over the years, every time an offence was reported, the police first looked at digital video recorders (DVRs) of CCTVs from the crime scene. “Officers stopped relying on human intelligence as technology crept in in the form of telephone tapping and electronic surveillance. But this situation created by Covid-19 will send them back to relying on humans,” says former police commissioner Rakesh Maria.
Explaining Ram how traditional policing worked, Maria said there used to be a surveillance register at police stations with details of repeat offenders. On a large blackboard, police personnel were required to write down the date when they last visited the individual at his house. During weekly visits of the DCP to the police station, the individual would have to be produced before him. “When a crime was reported next and if one of the persons under watch wasn’t found at home for long, we would know he was up to some mischief,” Maria said. With offenders being released on bail or parole due to the pandemic, the job of cops has become tougher. “Petty criminals could resort to crime again. The police’s best bet then would be to physically surveil their homes and develop informants like earlier,” Maria said.
Could tech help identify masked faces captured on camera? “If the police have a previous image of an offender, image analytics could help compare two images. Today, image processing has moved away from visual comparison. There are numerous outer image coordinators that can uniquely identify a person such as distance between his eyes, facial length etc. The system is 97% accurate, but the problem is it will not have judicial recognition,” said a tech consultant.
But there are always other giveaways such as gait or gestures, making sketch artists relevant in the age of tech. This is perhaps why drawing teacher Nitin Yadav will not discard the book he calls his “manual software” anytime soon. Besides features such as moles or injuries, Yadav’s questions also focus on body language. “I also use mimicry and child psychology,” says Yadav, citing cases in which he shaped the face of a child’s rapist through her friends’ descriptions. “In cases where the culprit would shroud his face with a handkerchief, we would ask the victim if he has interacted with the offender, his manner of speech or language. This tells us a bit about his origins and we then visualise,” said Mohammad Siddiq Shaikh, a sketch artist.
Right now, Shaikh is concerned the crime rate will surge as Mumbai unlocks and he hopes he can aid investigators checkmate their opponents.