A face recognition camera worth Rs90,000 was stolen from Faizabad Metro Station in Islamabad, with the Safe City Authority taking nine full days to confirm the theft occurred.
The Safe City Islamabad surveillance team first noticed the camera had gone offline on April 19, but no immediate technical inspection team was ever dispatched to the site.
A criminal case was finally registered on April 28 at the Industrial Area police station under Section 379 of the Pakistan Penal Code against the still unidentified persons.
Technical teams visited Faizabad Metro Station only after the camera had remained continuously offline for several consecutive days, at which point they found it had gone completely missing.
Footage captured by the camera before it went offline was then reviewed by authorities, and the recording clearly showed an unidentified man removing and stealing the surveillance device.
The face recognition camera was part of the Safe City Islamabad network and had been monitoring the busy Faizabad Metro Station before it was taken by the thief.
This is not the first time Safe City camera equipment has been stolen in Islamabad, as similar incidents have occurred multiple times in recent years across the city.
In September 2023, a Safe City camera worth Rs120,000 was stolen from a spot one furlong from Margalla police station, and the theft went undetected for two weeks.
No physical inspection was carried out after that camera went dark; authorities only filed a written report and verbally communicated the matter to a concerned senior police officer.
In March 2024, two Safe City cameras worth Rs1.1 million on the Koral flyover stopped transmitting footage on the night of March 31 without immediate action being taken.
The monitoring room received no footage from those two Koral flyover cameras, yet the Safe City Authority took no serious action to investigate or respond until April 5.
In October 2025, a battery worth Rs35,000 was discovered to be missing from Safe City equipment fixed to a pole in G-9/2 area, near Karachi Company police station.
The federal government last year gave formal approval for a Rs7.499 billion project to expand Safe City Islamabad surveillance coverage to reach approximately 90 percent of the capital.
Of the total approved budget, Rs7.234 billion covers technology costs, Rs144.684 million covers consultancy, Rs31.164 million covers utilities, Rs74.250 million covers contingencies, and Rs13.6 million covers staff salaries.
The Islamabad Safe City Project was first launched in 2016 at a total cost of Rs6 billion and was then subsequently transferred to the Islamabad police in 2019.
