Lucknow, Feb 11 The Lucknow bench of the Allahabad High Court has directed the Uttar Pradesh chief secretary to look into CCTV cameras installed in the police stations across the state having gone non-functional for a long time.
The bench directed the chief secretary to issue an appropriate circular fixing the responsibility of the top police officers of the districts in case CCTV footage is not preserved in any case.
The bench directed the chief secretary to make a thorough inquiry into all these angles and issue the circular; otherwise, he would have to appear in the court on February 23.
A bench of Justices Abdul Moin and Babita Rani passed the order on February 4, uploaded on Wednesday, on a writ petition filed by Shyam Sundar Agrahari.
The petitioner's lawyer Shivendra Shivam Singh Rathore had submitted that the petitioner, a handicapped person of 56 years, had been booked in a false case by the Motigarpur police of district Sultanpur.
The petitioner was granted anticipatory bail in the case by the district court.
Later, the police picked him up from his house on the night of September 6 last year, took him to the police station and after assaulting him grievously in the lock up, booked him in yet another false case.
The petitioner had sought quashing of the case for being booked falsely and illegally after ascertaining the truth from CCTV footage.
When the bench summoned Superintendent of Police Kunwar Anupam Singh, he filed his personal affidavit expressing his inability to produce the CCTV footage as the CCTV cameras of the police station Motigarpur had been non-functional since June 1, 2025.
In course of hearing, the bench found that the Supreme Court had already issued a directive that CCTV footage of the police stations must have to be preserved for one-and-a-half years and in any case for at least six months but the director general of police (DGP) had issued a circular on June 20, 2025 fixing the time for preserving the footage for two-and-a-half months only.
"This act of DGP is contemptuous of the Supreme Court directives," said the bench.
The bench even noted that in the present case, even the DGP's directions were not complied with as CCTV cameras had stood non-functional from June 1 till September 9, 2025 when it had taken notice of the issue that the petitioner had allegedly been picked up by the police (on September 6).
Reacting to repeated instances of non-preservation of CCTV footage owing to non-functionality of the cameras, the bench said, "If only one incident had come before this Court of the cameras being not working, it could have been understood but when something is happening repeatedly, it cannot be said to be a co-incidence inasmuch as strangely it is only when the courts require the CCTV footage from the concerned police station, it is discovered that the cameras are out of order."
