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Journalism of Courage
The Mumbai police’s newly launched SMS-based helpline for women travelling by autorickshaws and taxis has received a total of 400 text messages in the first three days of its launch. Police officers said that a majority of the messages were ‘test’ messages sent by people who were curious to know if the helpline was actually operational.
The helpline number —9969777888 — was launched on Saturday by Mumbai Police in collaboration with the Regional Transport Office (RTO) in the wake of a recent rape and murder murder case of a techie. Women travelling by autorickshaw and taxis can send a message containing the licence plate number of the vehicle to this number, which will be recorded in a central server based in the police control room.
“On Saturday and Sunday, the helpline number received around 250 text messages. However, none of these contained licence plate numbers of taxis or autorickshaws. They were simply sent by people to check if the helpline was working. On Monday, however, the helpline number has received around 150 text messages from across the city, and all of these messages contained licence plate numbers of autorickshaws or taxis that the senders were travelling in,” said Mumbai police spokesperson Deputy Commissioner of Police Mahesh Patil.
Officials said the software on which the helpline works is based on a simple system, according to which only the licence plate number of the taxi or autorickshaw and the current location of the sender as per his cellphone tower location is stored.
“The details will be stored in the server and can be used to provide a direction for the investigation in case any untoward incidents occurred. Each such text message gets a response, advising the sender to call the 100 helpline if they suspect that something is amiss,” Patil added.
mumbai.newsline@expressindia.com
