Delhi: Face-recognition cameras to help police keep a hawk's eye

New Delhi, Jan 18: For the first time, Delhi Police is installing face-recognition cameras around the venue of Republic Day celebrations and at the city's entry points to identify any anti-national or criminal elements before they sneak.

The cameras will be installed at airports, railway stations, bus stands etc and on the routes leading to Rajpath where the Republic Day parade will be held with US President Barack Obama as the Chief Guest.

"These cameras have advanced face recognition algorithm which will identify faces in a crowd and match them to available photographs of terrorists and criminal elements in our database. "Once matched, the software will alert us and the suspect can be nabbed," said a senior police official.

"We are going to install around 80 to 100 such cameras at strategic entry points of the city and at the parade venue," he added.

Massive security arrangements are in place for this year's Republic Day celebrations as the threat perception is higher due to presence of Obama.

Presence of President Pranab Mukherjee, Prime Minister Narendra Modi and a host of other dignitaries in an open ceremony is a big security challenge for various agencies.

Sources said that nearly 40,000 security personnel, 15,000 more than the last time will be deployed for the event from Delhi Police, central armed forces and other agencies and all metro stations in the radius of one kilometre will be shut down on the morning of January 26.

On Friday, the top brass of Delhi Police and other security agencies held meetings with sleuths of US Secret Service and top police officials of neighbouring states to chalk out a coordination plan during the event .

According to sources, officials of the US Secret Service discussed the overall security set up for Obama's visit and also sought a certain details regarding the hotel he would stay, routes he will travel and the places he will visit.

They have also asked access to CCTV cameras installed on all the routes travelled by the US President and several emergency exit routes were also finalised for President Obama's entourage.

In a related development, an interstate co-ordination meeting aimed at strengthening cooperation and coordination in order to address various issues related to policing in NCR was held under the chairmanship of Commissioner of Police B S Bassi today at PHQ.

"During the meeting, Bassi instructed officials to keep a watch on open area for flying of para-glider, micro-light air craft, sharing information, conducting raids and concerted action against Inter-State criminals particularly those involved in heinous offences, repeat offender and gangs etc in order to strengthen measures of counter terrorism," said a senior police official.

The main objective of the meeting was to share terror related intelligence and inputs about various extremist outfits and their designs, besides curbing criminal activities in NCR region and having better coordination on all aspects of policing in view of the coming Republic Day.

Senior officers of Delhi Police and their counterparts from Haryana, Punjab, Himachal Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh, Uttrakhand, Rajasthan and J&K attended the meeting," he added. The police chief sought cooperation for creation of digitized databank for fingerprints of criminals operating in North India.

PTI