Delhi Cops May Get a Squadron of Night-Vision Spy Drones


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Drones with night vision cameras may soon patrol the streets of India’s capital city.

The Delhi police plan to launch an ambitious drone-based surveillance project as early as next month, according to the Times of India.


Citing an unnamed source at the police department, the paper reports that the each drone will fly about 200 feet above the ground and cover an area of three to four kilometers. Quick Response Teams, or QRT, will monitor the video streams in real-time, the paper says.


The move follows a high profile accusation that an Uber driver raped a woman in Delhi last week. But the safety of women in India has been a matter of concern for quite some time, and received international attention thanks to mass protests following the gang-rape of a 23-year-old women in Delhi in 2012.


Still, the city’s drone surveillance program will likely raise major privacy concerns, not to mention questions about the safety of having large numbers of drones circling the skies.


The police will begin by deploying drones in the north district area, the same part of town that the Uber incident occurred occurred, the Times reports. “With this project, north Delhi will become the first district with complete camera surveillance in Delhi,” the source told the paper. “This would be achieved with the combined range of with CCTVs and drones.”


If successful in Delhi, the project could be expanded to other cities the paper’s source says. But for now, the police department is still in the process of procuring the equipment.



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