The Madras High Court on Wednesday, September 27 expressed displeasure over Southern Railway not having installed closed-circuit television (CCTV) cameras / video surveillance system (VSS) in all 442 railway stations in Tamil Nadu even seven years after 24-year-old techie S. Swathi was hacked to death at Nungambakkam railway station in Chennai on June 24, 2016.
Chief Justice S.V. Gangapurwala and Justice P.D. Audikesavalu wrote that the inordinate delay “demonstrates the total apathy on the part of the administration towards the security system in railway stations,” and directed Southern Railway to come up with a reasonable timeline within which all railway stations in Tamil Nadu would be provided with CCTV surveillance.
The observations were made while passing interim orders on a suo motu public interest litigation petition that had been taken up by the High Court in 2016 after the murder of the techie in broad daylight supposedly due to unrequited love. The Railway Protection Force filed a status report before the court on Wednesday listing out the steps taken so far.
