Seven thousand cameras will be deployed around Bengaluru at over 3,000 locations in a bid to make silicon city safer, especially for women and girls. The union government has selected Honeywell Automation to lead the Bengaluru Safe City Project under the Nirbhaya fund.

Bengaluru is among eight cities that have been picked for the Safe City project, as reported. The project involves identification of hotspots for crimes against women, deployment of infrastructure and technology to check the same.

This initiative by the Ministry of Home Affairs aims to create a safe, secure and empowering environment for women and girls in public places to enable them to pursue all opportunities without the threat of gender-based violence or harassment.

At the cost of Rs 496.57 crore, this initiative will be implemented in stages, and Honeywell will operate and maintain the infrastructure created for the next five years.

It will create an integrated Command and Control Centre to manage a state-of-the-art video system with 7,000 cameras across the city that will provide advanced video analytics, including facial recognition, a ‘Dial 100’ application and drones. It will also upgrade the Suraksha app of the city police to better citizen engagement and incident response rate.

”Our technology-led integrator approach is helping city administrators make informed decisions and improve safety for citizens in near real time. We want to now deliver this for Bengaluru, to turn it into a city that’s safer and more resilient,” said Honeywell Building Technologies Asia President Ashish Modi, as quoted.

Although the number of crimes against women in Karnataka are lower than many other states, it is also plagued by the issue of low conviction rate. According to reports, the state has recorded 1,168 rapes cases this year upto May 2021, of which 22 were gang-rapes.

The total number of crimes against women that have been reported in Karnataka this year until the end of May, including dowry, abduction, molestation among others, stood at 4,401. The total numbers stood at 10,761 in 2020 and 10,227 in 2019. To add to the woes, the conviction rate of Karnataka and Bengaluru especially have been much lower than other states and metros.

According to the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB), Karnataka police recorded a conviction rate of 51.2 per cent, much lower than other metros, as Delhi, Chennai, Telangana, and Maharashtra stood at 85.6 per cent, 66 per cent, 64.5 per cent and 58 per cent respectively.