To ensure women’s safety in public places and prevent crimes, Tamil Nadu police will install 2,355 AI-linked surveillance cameras at 1,045 identified locations across Chennai, Tambaram, Avadi, Madurai, Trichy and Coimbatore.The cameras will cover women’s colleges, schools, working women’s hostels, IT corridors, textile factories, bus stops, shopping areas, places of worship and other public spaces. “The locations have been selected to improve surveillance where women study, work, commute and gather,” said a senior police official.Unlike conventional CCTV networks, which help police retrieve footage after an incident, the proposed system will combine facial recognition, automatic number plate recognition (ANPR) and AI-powered behavioural analytics, the official said. “Beyond identifying suspects and vehicles, the network is designed to flag suspicious activity that could indicate stalking, harassment or potential violence.”According to tender documents, the system will analyse video feeds for loitering, aggressive behaviour and fights. It can also correlate repeated sightings of individuals across connected cameras, helping police identify suspicious movement patterns rather than relying on isolated recordings.For instance, if a man repeatedly follows a woman near her college entrance, later appears behind her at a bus stop and is subsequently spotted at a nearby junction, the system could flag the pattern for review. Control-room personnel can examine the visuals and dispatch the nearest patrol if intervention is warranted.This could flag violent confrontations before they turn fatal, an officer involved in the project said, citing the March 2018 murder of a college student outside Meenakshi College in Chennai. Her stalker picked a quarrel before slitting her throat. “Incidents such as the Oct 2022 St Thomas Mount railway station murder, where a man stalked a college student for days before pushing her in front of a train, could also be prevented,” the officer added.The private agency securing the contract will deliver a system that can alert monitoring officers in police control rooms in real time, allowing them to assess incidents without waiting for complaints.The network will also detect unattended objects and intrusions at designated locations. Recorded footage must be retained for at least 30 days, enabling police to retrieve evidence during routine criminal investigations.Advocate R Vanitha said surveillance technology had largely been used to solve crimes rather than prevent them. “With many CCTV cameras remaining dysfunctional, the fear of surveillance has weakened. Real-time AI surveillance could help prevent crimes. But the govt should maintain the system and now allow it to deteriorate,” she said.
