An app for women’s safety

Mobile phones can go a long way in making women feel secure while commuting on trains, Railway Minister Suresh Prabhu said on Friday.

“Mobiles can be a very effective medium in removing the feeling of insecurity among women commuters,” Mr. Prabhu said at a seminar on passenger safety here.

While stressing the need to prioritise safety measures for women commuters, Mr. Prabhu launched a mobile phone application for women security in Mumbai’s suburban trains, which ferry roughly 75 lakh commuters daily.

The application, ‘m-Indicator,’ allows women passengers to avail themselves of immediate help from the Railway Protection Force with just an SMS. It does not require GPS or Internet for the RPF to operate and comes with the automatic location alert SMS facility that can come in handy during emergency when the victim is unable to access the phone.

The SMS contains the user’s approximate location, compartment and train information. This will allow the RPF to track the victim’s location even in a moving train and provide help at the next station.

“I am confident that this will help control crime but the police must also stay alert. This is just the first step and more measures for complaint redress will take place,” Mr. Prabhu said.

Whenever a user finds herself in an emergency, she can click on the “safety” icon on her mobile home screen which will immediately send her location SMS to her relatives and within a minute the SMSes will be sent to the RPF control room automatically from the phone.

“Since people might raise concerns over their privacy, we are planning CCTVs in the passages of trains,” he said.

On January 15, Mr. Prabhu will hold a conference in New Delhi on rail policing. Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh has also been invited for the event.