‘Smart policing’ fails to attract real complainants

“Smart policing” by the Delhi police has failed to attract genuine complainants as they could find only 158 genuine complaints out of more than 1,000 calls on their mobile-phone based application, “Himmat”, for the safety of women since its launch in January, 2015.

The data was revealed by an RTI reply, which shows that despite advertisements and promotion, technical initiatives like Himmat app and other WhatsApp and Hike helpline number failed to attract complaints.

“Most of the complainants still prefer traditional way of approaching police for any kind of assistance. The mobile applications are just options out of existing helplines, we respond to every calls or alerts on any of our helplines,” said a senior police official.

“Number of downloads is encouraging but the number of genuine complaints are low. In most cases, people just dialled the SOS number after downloading it as they wanted to ensure that the app was working and that police action would be taken,” the official said. The app has been downloaded on more than 50,000 mobile phones as per Google play store.

The mobile-based application is basically for the safety of women travelling alone as they can use its features to alert the Delhi police in case of any threat. The Himmat app was started on January 1, 2015.

The RTI filed by Ved Pal revealed that only 123 complaints have been registered through Himmat application in the year 2015 and 35 complaints have been registered through this application in the year 2016 from January to 21 September.

“All the complaints registered through this app in 2015 and 2016 have been resolved and there are no pending case,” the police said in their reply.