There have been many incidents in which we have seen that a policeman who is present at the location shows his disinterest in helping the victim but a person gets immediate help after dialing number 100. Something of this sort happened in Baguiati where a boy got immediate aid as he dialed 100 but a child of 16 was denied help from the policemen present on the road, when the victim suffered auto rage.
The number 100 should be dialed to call police in the case of emergency but it’s very shocking that majority of the calls made on this number are fake and made just for fun. You will be surprised to know that the special branch of police in Pune receives nearly 10,000 calls daily out of which 70 percent are pranks.
The operators taking calls at the Bidhannagar City Police’s control room have a tough time, as sometimes they get calls from girlfriends who are upset with their boyfriends, parents who want the cops to come and scold their kids for not listening to them and drunk men or kids who just want to have a laugh.
The main objective of number 100 is to provide help to the person who makes the call by coordinating with different police stations and patrolling vans but with more than 1,000 prank calls in a day, people who really need help don’t actually get it.
An operator from Salt Lake control room says,
“During holidays and after 9pm on regular weekdays, our control room gets flooded with fake calls. Since we can’t filter a fake caller without attending the call, some genuine calls get missed. The problem becomes all the more acute during a crisis situation like an accident, communal tension, a fire or during elections when we receive hundreds of genuine calls.”
The major chunk of these prank callers consists of children and drunk men. Some kids just dial the number and don’t disconnect it while few disconnect it after saying “Hello, is it police?”
Several kids call police helpline just to brag in front of their friends that they are not afraid of talking to police and few just want to have fun by giving fake information of fire or murder. As per an officer, they have a different way to handle such kids. “In these situations, we call up the parents to warn them and tell them to discipline the child,” says the officer. Even more amazingly, the number 100 is also dialed by the persons who repair mobiles just to check the connection.
However, there are many stories of success associated with Dial 100 too. For example, in the beginning of this month, a person filed a complaint in Salt Lake control room about his stolen car which was parked outside his home. The operator told,
“The car was GPS-enabled and we tracked it down near airport. I informed the officials there but by the time they tried to stop it, it had gone past the area. Later, it was tracked near Barasat, but even there our officers missed it. I set an alert over the WhatsApp group and by night, the car was tracked at Englishbazar in Malda.”
As per the senior officers of Bidhannagar Commissionerate, a case can be filed against prank callers under IPC section 188 and if the caller is found to be guilty, he/she can be sentenced for one year or a fine of Rs.1,000 can be imposed. An officer tells, “An undertaking is taken from the caller that he will not commit such offence again.”
Don’t you think that the misuse of Dial 100 should be stopped and prank callers should be punished so that they learn a lesson? Share your opinion with regard to the article in the comments section below.
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