A recording of what happened to you probably exists right now. The only real question is whether it will still exist by the time you get around to asking, because most systems write over their own footage on a fixed cycle and nobody sends you a warning the week before yours is due to go.
So the first move is not the application. It is working out who physically holds that hard disk, because that one fact decides whether the Right to Information Act reaches the footage at all, or whether you need a completely different route.
The RTI Act only works against a public authority. It does not reach a private camera, however badly you need what is on it.
Footage the RTI Act can reach, because a public authority holds it:
Footage the RTI Act does not reach, because the holder is private:
There is a third situation worth knowing about. If the police have already collected private footage during an investigation, a copy now sits with a public authority, and it becomes RTI information in their hands. That does not make it easy, because an ongoing investigation brings Section 8(1)(h) into play, and that clause exempts “information which would impede the process of investigation or apprehension or prosecution of offenders”. But the record has changed hands, and a refusal under that clause has to be reasoned rather than reflexive. See when Section 8(1)(h) can and cannot be used.
If your holder is a co-operative society or an NGO, the answer is not automatic. See when a body counts as substantially financed before assuming either way.
There is no retention period in the RTI Act. Nothing in it tells any public authority how long to keep video. What exists is a Supreme Court direction for police stations, and then a patchwork of internal policies that you only find out about when someone tells a tribunal.
| Who holds it | What is on the record about how long it is kept | Source |
|---|---|---|
| A police station | 18 months. If the equipment cannot manage that, the maximum period the equipment allows and “in any case, not below 1 year” | Supreme Court direction, 2 December 2020 |
| A public authority, in general | Nothing fixed. It is whatever that body's own storage policy happens to be, and you usually learn it only in the reply | The RTI Act sets no retention rule |
| Western Railway, Dadar foot over bridge | The railway told the Commission that footage was auto deleted after 30 days because of storage capacity | CIC decision, 6 November 2018 |
| A State Bank of India branch | The bank's CPIO told the Commission that under its SOP footage is auto deleted after 90 days | CIC decision, 9 August 2023 |
| A private holder | No general rule at all | Assume the shortest case |
Read the middle rows properly. Those are two decided appeals about two specific systems in two specific years. They are not national retention rules and nobody should quote them as such. What they are is evidence of the range: one public authority erased in a month, another in three.
The working assumption that keeps you safe is that you have days, not weeks. Send the preservation request the same week the incident happens, even if you have not yet decided whether to file anything at all. Preserving costs you a stamp. Losing the footage costs you the case.
Two definitions settle this before any argument starts.
Section 2(f) defines information to include “data material held in any electronic form”. A CCTV recording is exactly that.
Section 2(j) then defines the right itself, and clause (iv) is the one to quote in your application. The right to information includes “obtaining information in the form of diskettes, floppies, tapes, video cassettes or in any other electronic mode”. The drafters in 2005 were thinking of video cassettes, but “any other electronic mode” carries the clause forward to a pen drive.
Clause (i) of the same sub-section gives you a second, quieter option that most applicants never use: the right to “inspection of work, documents, records”. You can ask to view the footage at the office instead of asking for a copy of it. That matters, and there is a reason to prefer it, below.
Section 7(9) then says information “shall ordinarily be provided in the form in which it is sought unless it would disproportionately divert the resources”. So asking for it on a pen drive is a normal request, not a special favour.
Section 7(1) gives the PIO thirty days. Its proviso gives you a much shorter clock: “Provided that where the information sought for concerns the life or liberty of a person, the same shall be provided within forty-eight hours of the receipt of the request.”
Be honest with yourself about whether you are inside it. The proviso is about information that concerns life or liberty, and PIOs read it narrowly. Footage of a custodial assault, a person who has not come out of a police station, a threat to life, or an injury being denied treatment is a real case for it. Footage of a parking dispute or a boundary wall is not, and claiming the proviso there gets your whole application treated as inflated.
If you are inside it, say so on the face of the application. Write the words life or liberty, cite the proviso, and give the one or two facts that make it true. A PIO who ignores a properly grounded 48 hour request has done something quite different from being late by a week.
Work out your own dates on the RTI Timeline Tracker so you know exactly when the reply became overdue.
Footage refusals are not usually about secrecy. They are about the other people in the frame. Three provisions do nearly all the work, and you can defuse all three in the way you word the request.
Section 8(1)(g) exempts information whose disclosure “would endanger the life or physical safety of any person or identify the source of information or assistance given in confidence for law enforcement”. This gets used for station and platform footage on security grounds.
Section 8(1)(j) exempts “personal information the disclosure of which has no relationship to any public activity or interest, or which would cause unwarranted invasion of the privacy of the individual”. Every stranger who walked past the camera is a third party with a privacy interest, and this is the single most common reason a footage request dies.
Section 11 is not an exemption, it is a delay. If the information relates to a third party, the PIO must give that third party written notice “within five days from the receipt of the request”. The third party then gets ten days to object, and the PIO's deadline stretches to forty days from your original request. On a system that erases at thirty days, Section 11 alone can outlive your footage.
Four wording choices deal with most of this.
Send the preservation request as a separate letter on the same day. It is not an RTI application, it asks for nothing to be given to you, and it therefore has no thirty day clock to sit inside. All it does is put the holder on notice that a specific recording is required as evidence, which makes routine deletion a much more awkward thing to explain later.
Use the AI RTI Drafter to turn the specifics below into a clean application.
Failure one: the footage was already gone. In Priyansu S Mishra v. PIO and Sr. DSC, RPF, Western Railway (CIC/WRAIL/A/2017/135249, decided 6 November 2018), the appellant asked for CCTV footage of the middle portion of the foot over bridge at Dadar station for 13 August 2016, between 7.30 pm and 8.15 pm. The CPIO first denied it under Section 8(1)(g). The railway later explained that the footage had been auto deleted after 30 days for want of storage capacity. Information Commissioner Amitava Bhattacharyya directed the CPIO to supply what was on record free of charge, or else to file an affidavit confirming the auto deletion. Note what the applicant was left holding: an affidavit about a recording that no longer existed.
Failure two: the footage was refused for privacy. In Amit Bhargava v. CPIO, State Bank of India, RBO-4, Delhi (CIC/SBIND/A/2022/633451, decided 9 August 2023), the appellant asked for complete CCTV recordings of all public access areas of a branch across six separate time periods spread over 2019 and 2021. The CPIO said no recording was available, and told the Commission that under the bank's SOP footage is auto deleted after 90 days. Information Commissioner Saroj Punhani upheld the denial, holding that the material sought carried elements of personal information of third parties under Sections 8(1)(g) and 8(1)(j).
Both requests were wide, both were late, and both failed. A fifteen minute window, asked for in the same month, framed around the applicant's own presence, is a materially different application.
No RTI application will help you here. Four things will.
One line on what happens afterwards. Video is an electronic record, so putting it before a court brings in the certificate under Section 63(4) of the Bharatiya Sakshya Adhiniyam, 2023. Getting hold of the footage and getting it admitted are two separate jobs, and the second one is set out at the Section 63 certificate for electronic evidence.
This is the one category where the Supreme Court has fixed the answers, and where you should never accept a vague reply.
In Paramvir Singh Saini v. Baljit Singh (SLP (Criminal) No. 3543 of 2020, decided 2 December 2020), a bench of Justices R.F. Nariman, K.M. Joseph and Aniruddha Bose directed the following.
Where the cameras must be. Paragraph 16 lists them: all entry and exit points, the main gate, all lock-ups, all corridors, the lobby and reception area, all verandas and outhouses, the Inspector's room, the Sub-Inspector's room, the areas outside the lock-up room, the station hall, the front of the police station compound, outside (not inside) washrooms and toilets, the Duty Officer's room, and the back part of the police station.
What they must record. The systems “must be equipped with night vision and must necessarily consist of audio as well as video footage”.
How long the recording must survive. “CCTV cameras must then be installed with such recording systems so that the data that is stored thereon shall be preserved for a period of 18 months.” Where the equipment on the market cannot store that long, States must buy equipment allowing “the maximum period possible, and, in any case, not below 1 year”.
Your right to have it secured. Paragraph 20 records that where there is a human rights violation, “the victim has a right to have the same secured”. Complaints go to the State Human Rights Commission and to the Human Rights Court for the district, and the Court states that the Commission or Court “can then immediately summon CCTV camera footage in relation to the incident for its safe keeping”. That is a far faster instrument than an RTI application, and it does not depend on the police station's cooperation.
Who is answerable. The judgment sets up a State Level Oversight Committee, a District Level Oversight Committee and a Central Oversight Body for the central agencies. The DLOC includes the District Magistrate and the Superintendent of Police, and it is a legitimate address for a written complaint that a station's cameras were not working on a given date.
Now the reality check, because a citizen guide that stops at the direction is not much use. Compliance has been poor enough that the Supreme Court took up the question again on its own. On 4 September 2025 it registered a suo motu case, In Re: Lack of Functional CCTVs in Police Stations (SMW(C) No. 7/2025), before Justices Vikram Nath and Sandeep Mehta, and it has been examining installation, functioning and preservation since.
The practical consequence is this. Ask two questions, not one. Ask for the footage, and separately ask whether the cameras at that station were functional on that date, when they were last audited, and for how long that station's system retains data. A reply that the cameras were not working is itself a document, and it is the document a Human Rights Commission, a DLOC, or a court will want to see.
Related reading: RTI for arrest and custody records and custodial death and torture compensation.
To The Public Information Officer [Name and full address of the public authority] Subject: Request for information under Section 6(1) of the Right to Information Act, 2005 (video record) Sir / Madam, I request the following information under Section 6(1) of the RTI Act, 2005. 1. A copy of the CCTV recording of the camera covering [exact location, for example: the main gate / the corridor outside Room 214 / the reception counter] at [name of the office or premises], for the period from [HH:MM] to [HH:MM] on [DD/MM/YYYY]. 2. The camera identification number of that camera, and the total number of cameras covering the said location on that date. 3. The retention period after which recordings from that system are deleted or overwritten, and a copy of the office order, circular or SOP that fixes it. 4. Whether the said camera was functional throughout the period at item 1, and if not, a copy of the fault or maintenance record for that date. Form in which the information is sought: under Section 2(j)(iv) and Section 7(9) of the Act, on a pen drive or CD. I am willing to pay the prescribed cost. I confirm that I am myself present in the recording sought at item 1, and this request is limited to that period. I have no objection to the faces of other individuals being masked or blurred before the copy is supplied. If a copy cannot be supplied, I request inspection of the said recording under Section 2(j)(i) of the Act at your office, on a date convenient to you. [Include the next paragraph only where it is genuinely true.] This information concerns the life and liberty of a person, namely [state the fact in one line]. I therefore request that it be provided within forty-eight hours as required by the proviso to Section 7(1) of the Act. The prescribed application fee is enclosed by [Indian Postal Order number / court fee stamp / online payment reference]. For a central public authority the fee is Rs 10 under Rule 3 of the Right to Information Rules, 2012. For a state public authority, check the fee fixed by your own state's rules. No fee is payable by a person below the poverty line, on producing the certificate. Yours faithfully, [Name] [Full postal address, mobile number, email] [Date and place]
This is not an RTI application. Send it to whoever physically holds the recording, public or private, and keep the acknowledgement.
To The Branch Manager / The Station House Officer / The Secretary, [Society] / The Occupier, [Premises] [Full address] Subject: Preservation of CCTV recording of [DD/MM/YYYY] required as evidence Sir / Madam, An incident concerning me took place at [exact location] on [DD/MM/YYYY] between [HH:MM] and [HH:MM]. The camera covering [describe location] would have recorded it. The recording is required as evidence in a proceeding that is being initiated / is pending [give the FIR or complaint or case number if there is one]. I request you to preserve the recording of that camera for that period, and not to allow it to be deleted or overwritten by any automatic process, until the proceeding is concluded or until a competent authority directs otherwise. I also request you to confirm in writing that it has been preserved, and to state the date on which it would otherwise have been overwritten. A copy of this letter is being sent to [the police station / the investigating officer, where relevant]. Yours faithfully, [Name, address, mobile, email] [Date] Received by: ________________ Name: ________ Designation: ________ Date: ______
You cannot restore an overwritten recording, and no commission or court can either. What you can still do is convert the loss into a usable record.
Yes, a police station is a public authority and a recording is information under Section 2(f). Expect refusals under Sections 8(1)(g) and 8(1)(j). If the body you are asking is one that a State Government has notified as an intelligence or security organisation under Section 24(4), the Act largely does not apply to it, but the proviso keeps the door open: information “pertaining to the allegations of corruption and human rights violations” is not excluded. Say so expressly where that is your case. Ask narrowly, ask for the segment in which you appear, and run the human rights route in parallel.
The Supreme Court directed in Paramvir Singh Saini, on 2 December 2020, that recording systems be installed so the data “shall be preserved for a period of 18 months”, and where equipment cannot manage that, for the maximum possible period and in any case not below one year. Whether a given station has complied is a separate question, and one worth asking in writing.
No. The RTI Act applies to public authorities. For a private holder, send a written preservation request, and reach the footage through the investigating officer or through a court summons under Section 94 of the Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita, 2023.
Reframe rather than argue. Narrow the window to minutes, limit the request to the segment in which you yourself appear, state in writing that you accept masked faces or still frames, and offer to inspect the recording at the office under Section 2(j)(i) instead of taking a copy. Then carry that reframed position into the first appeal under Section 19(1).
Only when the information genuinely concerns the life or liberty of a person, which is what the proviso to Section 7(1) says. Custody, a disappearance, a threat to life or a denial of emergency treatment can qualify. A property or service dispute does not, and stretching it weakens the rest of your application.
You can ask, but expect Section 8(1)(j) and a Section 11 third party notice, and the forty day timeline in Section 11(3) may outlive the recording. A request by or with the written authority of the person shown is far stronger than a request by a stranger.
Not for the deletion itself, if it happened automatically before your application. Section 20(1) penalises refusing a request without reasonable cause, or delaying it, so the penalty question turns on how your application was handled. What you should extract instead is a written statement of the deletion date and the policy behind it.
Only with the certificate required by Section 63(4) of the Bharatiya Sakshya Adhiniyam, 2023, in the format of the Schedule to that Act. Ask the public authority for the recording and the certificate together, because going back for the certificate months later is much harder.
Yes. Preservation letter on day one, to the holder. RTI application on day one or two, if the holder is a public authority. A written request to the investigating officer, if a criminal case exists. Then the first appeal only if the reply is refused or absent. The full sequence, with the timelines, is set out in The RTI Playbook.