Supreme Court Moots Control Room To Monitor If CCTV Cameras In Police Stations Are Switched Off; Reserves Order
The Supreme Court today scheduled orders in the event where it took suo motu cognizance of a report on the absence of practical CCTVs and fatalities in police custodianship throughout the State of Rajasthan.
A bench of Justices Vikram Nath and Sandeep Mehta shared that it is taking into consideration independent tracking of the CCTV cameras in police headquarters with no human treatment, as also if CCTVs are mounted in conformity with the Court’s earlier instructions, the very same can be turned off by authorities.
“Issue is of oversight. Today there may be compliance affidavit, tomorrow officers may switch off cameras…we were thinking of a control room in which there is no human intervention…any camera goes off, there is a flag…there has to be inspection of police station also by independent agency…we can think of involving IIT to provide mechanism so that CCTV footage is monitored without human intervention”, stated Justice Mehta, upon hearing Senior Advocate Siddharth Dave
Notably, in December 2020, the Court had actually mandated in Paramvir Singh Saini v. Baljit Singh that all State and Union Territory Governments must make sure that CCTV cameras are mounted in every single police headquarters operating under them. However, conformity continued to be uneven, with lots of cameras either not mounted or existing obsolete.
Today, Dave educated that while some states have actually followed the instructions, others have not. He highlighted that the Union of India, which has leading exploring firms under it like the ED, NIA and CBI, have actually additionally not followed the Court’s orders. The elderly advice better recognized the concern of CCTV cameras being turned off by hand in police headquarters, and sent that tracking would certainly not just address concern of custodial fatalities, yet additionally custodial torment and abuse.
On September 4, the Court used up the concern suo motu, based upon a record released by Dainik Bhaskar, based on which around 11 individuals had actually passed away in police custodianship in Rajasthan over the last 8 months this year.
“We have come across a disturbing News Article in today’s newspaper ‘Dainik Bhaskar, Rajasthan Edition’, i.e., 4t h September, 2025. The News Article reveals that there have been 11 deaths in police custody in the State of Rajasthan in the past 8 months in the year of 2025, 7 of these unfortunate incidents happened in the Udaipur Division itself”, the Court kept in mind.
With this monitoring, the Registry was routed to sign up a suo motu situation and the issue put prior to CJI BR Gavai for suitable orders.
Case Title: IN RE ABSENCE OF FUNCTIONAL CCTVS IN POLICE HEADQUARTERS Versus, SMW( C)No 7/2025
