Thaindian News

New Delhi, May 22 (IANS) Expensive dresses were mysteriously disappearing from clothes retailer Gurkirat Singh’s storehouse in Delhi’s Palika Bazaar. Fed up, he installed a CCTV and monitored the footage every day. Within a few weeks he caught the thief — an employee who had been working with him for a decade.

Singh is one of the growing tribe of people who are getting over their technological reservations and owning up to the devious device. Be it to monitor their nanny’s movement or to keep an eye on an employee, CCTVs come in where security guards and the good-old dogs fail.

Singh, 45, is today a happy man. His little brush with technology has paid off in a big way.

“I got CCTVs installed in my two other shops and godowns as well and it’s very comforting to know that none of my employees would dare to steal from me again,” says Singh with a satisfied sigh.

Similarly, when 26-year-old Geeta Mathur hired a babysitter for her six-month-old boy, she installed CCTV cameras around her flat to be sure that the baby was treated well behind her back. The recorded footage was monitored by Geeta and her husband every night.

But within a couple of weeks, the young parents got a shocker as they saw their maid mercilessly leaving the kid unattended as she sat engrossed in front of TV and gorged on food. The baby wailed, but the maid never budged.

“The poor soul needed a diaper change and was hungry, but she remained glued to the TV. She was so shameless that she shut the door of the baby’s room to shun his cries. It was only in the evening before we returned home that she changed his diapers and fed him,” Mathur told IANS.

CCTV or Closed-Circuit Television Camera can either be directly connected to a monitor for live-viewing or footage can be recorded on a hard disk to view it later.

According to electronic store owners, sales of the gadget have escalated over the years with a clientele that ranges from over-protective parents to watchful businessmen.

“We sell over a dozen units every month and the sales have been strong and are increasing. Till a few years back, many thought of the CCTV as a fancy and useless gadget, but the perception has completely changed now,” said Rajesh Behl, an electric shop owner in central Delhi’s Palika Bazaar.

The price ranges anywhere from Rs.350 to Rs.8,000, depending on the features, brand and extra attachments one wishes to buy. The Japanese models are top of the price and quality range, followed by Taiwanese and Chinese models.

“There are different sizes for different uses. Like you can get a video recorder as small as a matchbox which has limited usability and a full-size recorder with night vision which can provide crystal clear images even in the dark,” said Vidit Raheja of Crown Electronics in a popular market.

According to the shopkeepers, the most advanced CCTVs are from Toshiba, Panasonic and Sony and are bought mostly by corporate houses, banks and restaurants.

For those who have got the devices installed admit that it was money well spent and recommend it to family and friends.

Agreed 28-year-old Suhaib Meraj who recently bought a new car and was exasperated as someone was repeatedly spoiling the paint job or breaking the antenna at night while the car was parked in a street outside his home in the old quarters of the city.

“I got a CCTV installed on my main gate from where I get a good view of the car. I recorded every night’s footage and within a week, I realised that it was the work of a jealous neighbour,” said a relieved Meraj.

Of late, CCTVs have also been making huge contributions in cracking criminal cases or providing major leads to investigative agencies.

In the Dhaula Kuan rape case where a BPO employee hailing from Mizoram was raped in a moving vehicle in November last year, it was a CCTV which captured the four accused and played a pivotal role in their arrests.

Yet again, when 20-year-old engineering student Shobhit Modi was found murdered near his house in Vasant Kunj, it was CCTV footage from a mall that showed that Modi entered the area with two girls around May 5 and showed him exiting the building alone.

(Rahul Vaishnavi can be contacted at rahul.v@ians.in)