In India, CCTV cameras touted as quick fix for women's safety

Last month, a Nigerian woman in New Delhi accepted a ride home from an upscale shopping mall with four men who then raped her in a moving car before pushing her out onto the road. Although her assailants fled the scene, a surveillance camera captured the grainy image of the car as it sped away, and within hours the police arrested the alleged attackers.

With the highest incidence of reported rape of any city in India — about 2,069 last year — New Delhi's newly elected government wants to install about 1 million surveillance cameras. Many in government hope that doing so would deter such crimes, but the proposal has raised concerns among women about privacy and doubts about whether the devices would prevent attacks in the city of 16 million people.

"Women in many neighborhoods told us during our meetings before the election that they want more cameras in the city because it gave them a feeling of assurance that somebody is watching," said Ashish Khaitan, a senior member of the Aam Aadmi (Common Man) Party, which now runs the city. "We must harness technology for women's safety."

Since the unprecedented national outcry that followed the fatal 2012 gang rape of a 23-year old student on a bus, women's safety continues to be a major issue here.

New Delhi already has more than 4,000 security cameras in malls, marketplaces, temples, mosques, movie theaters, offices, train stations and schools. Last week, the railway ministry said that it will place surveillance cameras in women-only coaches on some suburban trains.

Help desks for women have been set up at most police stations in New Delhi and 1,200 new female officers have been hired. Uniformed guards now ride many buses operating after dark to help female passengers feel safer, and the city now requires bus drivers to help women in distress.

Still, many of the safety features, such as panic buttons and GPS devices, installed in buses are not working. And some have been stolen.

According to a Hindustan Times poll in December, 97 percent of women said they have faced some form of sexual harassment in the city. And many say the deeper problem of social attitudes remains largely unaddressed.

"Cameras give me a sense of confidence, but can it deter rape?" asked Radhika Khurana, 18, a psychology student. "Women are blamed for everything in our society. What if the camera footage is used to ask us questions like: 'What was she doing out there so late anyway? Why was she wearing that? Who was she with?' "

Analysts say that authorities find it far easier to respond to rising incidences of rape by installing cameras than to strengthen the law enforcement response for women. A recent study said that only a third of India's 2.2 million police officers actually are deployed on beats or at police stations — the rest are assigned to other duties such as guarding VIPs or performing administrative tasks.

"With surveillance cameras, you circumvent the difficult job of fixing the weaknesses in the system, like policing, investigation, prosecution and court trials," said Milan Vaishnav, an associate with the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, who recently conducted a survey on public safety in Indian cities.

Critics say that the authorities' new emphasis on surveillance cameras is excessive because data shows that 9 in 10 rapists in New Delhi are known to their victims. Many of them are relatives or neighbors.

The outcry echoes a global concern about the increased use of surveillance cameras and the right to privacy. In the past decade, police officers in the United States and England — where the use of such cameras has increased greatly — have been suspended for using surveillance cameras to spy on women.

In New Delhi, outrage followed after eight minutes of surveillance camera footage showing a young couple kissing in the metro was posted by security officers on pornographic sites in 2013.

In 2011, the Illinois branch of the American Civil Liberties Union said the extensive network of U.S. government pan-tilt-zoom video surveillance cameras in big cities such as Chicago violate citizens' right to privacy.

"Many countries have gone through this debate about limited benefits of surveillance cameras. It sounds like a good solution from the outside, but it can very easily slip into becoming a tool for moral policing of women's behavior in a patriarchal society," said Kalpana Viswanath, senior advisor of Jagori, a women's advocacy group that conducted a safety audit in the capital two months ago. "Who is going to monitor these videos? Who will have custody? Surveillance cameras come from the notion that women need to be protected. We say protect our rights and freedoms instead."

Activists who founded a campaign called Why Loiter, which encourages Indian women to reclaim public spaces, now say the growing number of surveillance cameras will limit their freedom.

But police say that the cameras have helped solve some rape cases. The gang-rape of the paramedical student on the bus was recorded on a surveillance camera, helping police track down the driver.

A month ago, an 8-year-old girl was raped and killed by a drunk construction worker outside Bangalore. A surveillance camera caught the man walking unsteadily as he lured the child into an empty car shed. He came out after 30 minutes, alone.

Police made 50 posters and 10,000 pamphlets showing the CCTV image and an artist's sketch of the suspect's face based on the footage. The man was arrested in three days.

"The cameras help police catch the culprits, and that can act as a deterrent eventually," said Rajan Bhagat, a spokesman for Delhi Police.

Since November, a small experiment has begun in New Delhi. About 200 city buses have been equipped with cameras to combat the sexual harassment of women using public transportation.

Tanvi Bharadwaj, a 23-year old dental trainee, said that often when she rides a crowded bus, men continuously stare or use blind spaces to "touch and grope women." She said she hopes the cameras will change that.

One bus driver, who said he had little recourse to deter the harassers in the past, said the cameras have helped.

"Earlier, when I intervened and told the men not to trouble women, they ignored me," said Sanjay Kundir, the driver. "But now I tell them there are cameras in this bus. It scares them. They stop immediately."