Lucknow, February 11 The Lucknow bench of the Allahabad High Court has directed the Chief Secretary of Uttar Pradesh to investigate the CCTV cameras installed in police stations across the state that have been non-functional for a long time.
The bench directed the Chief Secretary to issue a circular assigning responsibility to the top police officers of the districts in case CCTV footage is not preserved in any case.
The bench directed the Chief Secretary to conduct a thorough investigation into all these aspects and issue the circular; otherwise, he would have to appear in 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 56-year-old disabled person, had been falsely implicated in a case by the Motigarpur police of Sultanpur district.
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 severely assaulting him in the lock-up, booked him in another false case.
The petitioner had sought the quashing of the case on the grounds that he had been falsely and illegally implicated 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 Motigarpur police station had been non-functional since June 1, 2025.
During the hearing, the bench found that the Supreme Court had already issued a directive that CCTV footage of the police stations must 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 only two and a half months.
"This action by the DGP is contemptuous of the Supreme Court directives," said the bench.
The bench also noted that in this case, even the DGP's directions were not followed, as the CCTV cameras had been non-functional from June 1 to September 9, 2025, when the issue of the petitioner being allegedly picked up by the police (on September 6) was brought to their attention.
Reacting to repeated instances of non-preservation of CCTV footage due to the non-functionality of the cameras, the bench said, "If only one incident had come before this Court regarding the cameras not working, it could have been understood, but when something is happening repeatedly, it cannot be said to be a mere coincidence, especially when it is only when the courts require the CCTV footage from the concerned police station that it is discovered that the cameras are out of order."
