By taking an innovative step towards eradication of the gender focused crimes and to provide safety to the people of the city, Udaipur Police Department launched an android personal safety application for the citizens. Application ‘Pukar’ will help people to contact the police in any kind of situation.

On Friday, the personal safety application was officially launched by the Superintendent of Police Ajaypal Lamba keeping in view the safety of women and tourists coming to the city.

Talking more about the safety application Lamba said that the App ‘Pukar’ will allow an individual to send his location to police in case of an emergency and can be downloaded from the Android market free of cost.

Lamba also added that through this safety App, the information of the emergency situation can be shared by the individual to 5 of his mobile contacts and if required, the emergency contacts can forward the message to Local Police Control Room.

On the launch of the App, S.P said that safety application will be helpful to identify all sorts of crimes and specially to curb the Gender Based Violence like Rape, Sexual harassment, Force marriages, Kidnapping, Domestic Violence etc.

The motive of introducing ‘Pukar’ to the people of Udaipur is to lower the gender based crimes and to make an easy approach of people to the police.

The Working of the App:

Once an individual downloads the app, he has to enter his contact numbers, name and details etc. He then has to enter 5 contact numbers of those people who are known to him, as his emergency contacts.

In case of an emergency he has to click on the application on his smart phone and an SOS Alert SMS will generate which will be delivered to those 5 contact numbers. After receiving the alert SMS, the concerned person can make his move and contact the police personnel at city’s police control room.

The SOS SMS will help the cops to know the location of the victim, his name, his mobile’s EMI number through which they can track the accused easily with the help of Google Maps, said SP.

Features:

While explaining the features of the application Aditya stated that when an individual clicks on the application, an SOS SMS is sent along with the location of the user to the chosen emergency contact numbers and additional location updates at every 5 minutes, 15 minutes and 1 hour thereafter.

It also gives an option to the emergency numbers to either forward the location and other details to the Police Control room or call the Police. In addition to it, the phone of the user automatically becomes silent and display brightness reduced. It becomes a GPS tracking device.

Organization:

The safety application ‘Pukar’ has been  created by the People for Parity (PfP) which is a non-profit organization led by a team of IIT Delhi graduates including Aditya Gupta, Arushi Mittal, Ravikant and Shashank Yaduvanshi.

PfP aims to engage police department and other institutes directly through technology to help reduce the gender based crimes. The Organization has already launched the Application ‘Pukar’ at Alwar, Delhi, Roorkee and Nainital, informed Aditya Gupta IIT graduate.

According to SP Ajaypal, “After receiving good response of the safety application at Alwar and Nainital we have taken the decision to launch the Application at Udaipur for all android users which will help them to approach the police quickly and will also add to the efficiency of the Police department.”

The city police and PfP also plan to conduct outreach events to make people aware of the benefits of this safety App. These events will also encourage breaking the silence on the endemic of gender based violence, and reporting cases of eve teasing, molestation, rape, domestic abuse etc. through ‘Pukar.’

To get more information on the App Pukar and the organization, click here.

The App can be downloaded from here.