CHANDIGARH, Punjab—Following the orders of Punjab & Haryana High Court, CCTV cameras have been installed in all the state wide 422 police stations and 37 CIA staff premises to keep an eye on officials and to put control over custodial abuse and misbehavior with the public. It is learnt that these cameras have been installed at the entry and exit points, women’s lock-ups of all the statewide Police stations.
Sharing the development with media, the Director of Bureau of Investigation Prabodh Kumar informed that the SSP or Commissioner offices will have a control room of these cameras so that any complaint by the common masses could be authenticated immediately by the concerned area’s police chief.
It is learnt that the sub-divisional police officers will have to send a report to the higher authorities every month that all the CCTV cameras installed in the police stations of their area are functional. The Superintendent of Police (Headquarters) in every district has been made the nodal officer for the project.
It is pertinent to note here that the Punjab police have an extremely bad record of custodial deaths. Thousands of innocent Sikh youths and their families were brutally killed by the Punjab police cops during the militancy period after committing an inhumane torture on them.
Recently, a Mukatsar based 24 year old youth named Jaspal Singh was murdered in the police custody. The killer cop Narinder Singh disposed off his dead body and then committed suicide. The whereabouts of Jaspal’s dead body is still unknown.
