The central government on Tuesday started a pan-India helpline number ‘112’ for all emergencies. The existing police number 100 will be attached to this number.
The number is under the one-India one emergency number initiative –Emergency Response Support System (ERSS) — of the Union home ministry.
The unique feature about this number is that it can be dialled using a feature phone by pressing ‘5’ or ‘9’ key for a longer time and in a smartphone the shortcut to dial this will be to press the power button three times.
Under this, a person in distress who is to become a victim of any crime or a distressful situation will be given immediate response and support.
Women and child development minister Maneka Sanjay Gandhi on Tuesday launched the ‘112 helpline’ and the 112 Apps in presence of Union home minister Rajnath Singh in New Delhi.
Gandhi appealed to the people of the country to not make fun or misuse the 112 service as such things create a problem and smooth functioning of the service.
The number will be operational in 17 states and Union Territories beginning on Tuesday while the aim is to start the number in the remaining states by the end of this year.
The emergency number will have better trained calltakers who will further forward the distressed person’s information to nearest responders to provide assistance.
This will enable much quicker assistance to the emergency response services, centres and volunteers.
Along with the 112, two more initiatives have been launched in the program in terms of women’s safety.
Gandhi launched a safe city implementation monitoring portal ,while Singh launched an online system to ascertain the status of sexual crimes investigation.
The home minister said the government is working towards ensuring women safety and has also prepared a national database of sexual offenders which has been released.
Singh further said that with all these three initiatives, the response to women’s security will be better. He said the government has made changes in the rules last year to speed up the investigation and process to complete the probe in sexual offences in two months.
On Tuesday, the ‘Investigation Tracking System for Sexual Offenses’ was also launched to ensure its compliance. Under this, the FIR and final report of all cases related to sexual crimes will be put on ‘Crime and Criminal Tracking Network and System’ (CCTNS).
These details will be left in the state-level data centers of CCTNS and in the National Data Centre, added the minister.
Explaining the emergency response aide system ‘112’ as a milestone, he said that ‘112’ number is used as emergency number in many countries, and almost all the phones already have the shortcut.
He further said that this project was almost complete and soon the number be made available in the entire country.
Through the 112 App in the phone, if the person approaches for assistance it will become more easier to provide the person aid as the system will receive exact geographical location of the person.
