Calcutta, July 9: Cops have to grope in the dark to find which way the dacoits fled after striking at Amarnath Chakraborty's house in Salt Lake's CE Block yesterday night as the area doesn't have a CCTV camera.

The dacoity in an upscale locality has once again exposed the township's vulnerability in the absence of adequate electronic surveillance.

Bidhannagar commissionerate that covers an area of 148sq km has only 52 CCTV cameras keeping tabs on the entry points.

There is no official data available with police to quantify how many private CCTV cameras are installed in the township. But realising the need for better coverage, the police had recently mapped vulnerable points in need of electronic surveillance.

"A CCTV footage could have given us an idea about the modus operandi of the dacoits and where they went," an officer said.

The closest CCTV camera that the police found in the locality doesn't cover the entry and exit points of Chakraborty's lane. "Till now we haven't spotted anything unusual in the footage collected from the nearest CCTV camera. Since the dacoits struck around 8pm, there were people on the road... it is difficult to understand if they had melt in the crowd," an officer said.

In absence of anything concrete, Chakraborty and his family have had to spend hours describing the men to the cops.

Five of the seven who had entered the house had their faces covered. Based on what the family said, the police have prepared sketches of two suspects.

Cops had detained five men today. The family was called to Bidhannagar (North) police station to identity if any of them resembled the dacoits. Since they could not identify anyone, the five were released later in the day.