Women’s security: Helpline linked with ‘M-indicator’

Mumbai : The commuters are grappling with getting timely help from Railway Protection Force (RPF) using railway helpline numbers displayed in trains, the RPF on other hand has come up with another ambitious concept of incorporating emergency button in ‘m-indicator’, a mobile phone application, to improve women security in trains.

At a seminar on Wednesday, Inspector General of RPF D P Kasar announced the tie-up of Western Railway with m-indicator to improve women security. Kasar said, “The idea is to send timely help to the women commuter if they are alone in train during the night.” The m-indicator app which is now used to get details of the train timings along with recent addition of weather updates and the BMC disaster alerts the app will also have an emergency button.

Abhijeet Patil, co-founder of m-indicator, said, “We will have an option using which the women commuter can sent their location to the control room which will they sent police constables immediately on the next station. The idea in the conceptual stage and we will be able to decide its specifications soon.”

Megha Iyer, resident of Dombivali, said, “We called up the control room to inform them about a drunkard who was beneath the seat in ladies first class compartment only to get a reply that there were no constables available at the moment. The constable could only reach the train when it had already reached Mumbra while the call was made at Ghatkopar.”

Senior Divisional Security Commissioner of WR, Anand Vijay Jha, spoke about having a workable model to improve women’s security in the trains. A need to increase interaction between police officials and commuters was felt with creating a database of regular commuter in the train. “The number of people travelling during night has also gone up over the years. The need to have homeguard or constables deployed between Borivali to Virar and Churchgate to Mumbai Central has increased,” said Kasar. The new version of the m-indicator will be launched with in a month according to the officials.