Ranchi railway station will be equipped with four face recognition cameras (FRCs), which are expected to come handy in preventing crimes and identifying missing children, by June this year.

A railway official said the development followed the railway board’s decision to install such cameras in as many as 6,104 stations across the country by 2022.

“Ranchi is on the first list of stations where FRCs will be installed by June this year. The other stations are Delhi, Anand Vihar, Mumbai, Calcutta, Chennai, Bhopal, Jaipur, Patna, Amritsar, Kanpur, Prayagraj, Varanasi, Bengaluru, Ahmedabad, Chandigarh and Raipur,” the official said.

According to the official, the facial recognition system in the cameras will be linked to the existing database on criminals and missing persons and would send instant alerts to the security personnel manning the police control room.

“The cameras will be installed at strategic locations to ensure optimum use,” he said.

Chief public relations officer of South Eastern Railway, Neeraj Kumar, said the face recognition software would be installed in the four existing CCTV cameras on the station.

“The Railway Protection Force (RPF) has taken the initiative to install the software that would convert the CCTV cameras into FCRs. It will take around three months,” Kumar said.

An RPF official supported Kumar.

“The primary idea behind installing the intelligent surveillance system is to monitor suspicious activities in and around stations. The stations will become a virtual fortress. Even without a physical boundary wall, we will be able to make the whole system more secure,” the official said.