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Indian Railways is planning to install thousands of CCTV cameras equipped with facial recognition across greater Mumbai in an effort to boost security.
The project is worth 890 million rupees (US$10.6 million) and is partially bankrolled by the Nirbhaya Fund, dedicated to enhancing women’s safety in the country.
A total of 6,122 cameras will be deployed to 364 railway stations operated by the Central Railway, a part of Indian Railways. Of them, around 3,652 will feature facial recognition technology and will be strategically placed across 117 vital railway stations, Central Railways spokesperson Shivraj Manaspure
told Free Press Journal.
“This introduction of 4K-enabled cameras is anticipated to revolutionize railway security,” says Manaspure
The Nirbhaya (“Fearless”) Fund was set up by the Indian government after the 2012 Delhi gang rape, which sparked widespread protests across India against gender-based violence. The fund has invested its largest slice of funding, around
29.2 billion rupees (US$350.8 million), into Safe City initiatives across eight metropolitan areas.
The Central Railway did not share the companies involved in the project. The company carries
400,000 passengers every day across the state of Maharashtra and parts of Karnataka and Madhya Pradesh.
In 2021, facial recognition company
NtechLab announced it would be
supplying Indian Railways with its technology in railway stations across Gujarat and Maharashtra.