Cameras and drones deployed for wildlife studies by forest department authorities around Jim Corbett National Park have also been used as tools for social control and moral policing of women and, disturbingly, voyeuristic behaviour, researchers have warned after a 14-month field study.

The researchers at the University of Cambridge in the UK have said the deliberate use of cameras and drones to monitor and intimidate women had adversely impacted the cultural and social lives of women living in villages around the park in Uttarakhand.

Their study, based on 270 interviews with women, men, social rights activists, forest guards and officers, has suggested that these surveillance technologies have invaded women’s privacy, prompting them to alter their behaviour in the forest and raising the risk of facing animal attacks.

“The cameras and drones are expanding society’s patriarchal gaze into the forest,” Trishant Simlai, a research associate in sociology at Darwin College, Cambridge, who led the study, told The Telegraph. “As a result, women are losing what they viewed as private spaces of escape and freedom.”

The study, published on Monday in the journal Environment and Planning F, has found that women have used the forest as a multi-faceted space to collect forest produce, build social relations with fellow women, seek privacy, or escape patriarchal violence.

“Women might sing songs during their visit to the forest, they might engage in moments of intimacy with a romantic partner, or they might chat about things they can’t openly discuss in their villages, for instance, issues relating to in-laws,” said Simlai. “The surveillance has disrupted such practices — and possibly increased their risk of facing wildlife attacks.”

The women interviewed for the study said they feel watched and intimidated by the cameras placed within and around Corbett by the forest department to monitor wildlife, including tigers. The loud singing in the forests deters wild animals from approaching the women. But the presence of cameras has made women sing and even speak much more quietly than they used to which, the researchers said, increased the chance of surprise encounters with elephants or tigers.

At times, women have often ventured into deeper and unfamiliar forest areas to avoid the cameras.

Forest authorities often place cameras near stream beds that are visited by elephants or tigers but such stream beds are also important “entry” and “exit” points used by women to enter the forests.

In 2017, a camera near a stream bed had captured the image of a woman relieving herself. Young men who had access to the images circulated them on social media, prompting angry villagers to destroy cameras and threaten the forest personnel.

Simlai, in the study paper, has quoted a local resident telling him: “What are they trying to monitor flying a drone where women from our village go to relieve themselves?”

Chris Sandbrook, a professor of conservation and society at Darwin College, and the study’s coauthor said cameras and drones are routinely deployed across the world for monitoring wildlife. But, he said, this study highlights the need to ensure that “they’re not causing unintended harm.”

The study documented only one incident where a woman led her abusive husband in front of a camera to record domestic violence.

Multiple studies have probed the impact of surveillance technologies such as CCTV systems in urban areas where they are deployed to address crime prevention, workplace monitoring and public safety. The Corbett study is among the first to examine surveillance impacts in a forest, Simlai said.