The Disha app lived up to its literal meaning too in the case of a woman in the city when she pressed the SOS button on the app in June this year. At the height of the COVID-19 second wave, it showed her the right direction in life (disha).
Bhagyalakshmi (name changed) living in the Lakshmi Nagar area has decided to end her life along with her daughter due to a financial crisis but within seconds of consuming poison has changed her mind and pressed the SOS button. Within a few minutes a police team reached her residence and rushed both to hospital and saved their lives. “Today she is a happy woman leading a meaningful life after receiving some counselling and support from philanthropists,” says Disha Deputy Superintendent of Police Arla Sreenivasulu.
The first and best example, however, was in the initial days of the launch of the app and setting up of the police station when a person was nabbed at Anantapur on NH 44, while travelling in a bus from Hyderabad to Bengaluru. He tried to sexually harass a co-passenger at Gooty while the vehicle was on the move. The woman used this technology and the alert police nabbed the accused.
Soon there was a minor girl missing from Dharmavaram town and the parents took the help of the Disha app to alert the police who apprehended the alleged kidnapper at Guntakal and registered a POCSO case against the youth.
“All this is the result of 7,941 awareness programmes organised at several levels with 6,18,668 persons attending them,” observes Mr. Srinivasulu.
Downloads
Anantapur district with a population of 45 lakh has close to 20 lakh women and the police estimate at least 5 lakh of them use either their own or a family member’s android smart phone on which Disha app can be downloaded.
Superintendent of Police Fakkeerappa Kaginelli tells The Hindu that till August 4, about 84,806 downloads of the app were registered from the district. There were 118 SOS calls since the launch that needed police action, and of them, FIRs have been registered in 21 cases, while in the remaining a compromise solution has been arrived at.
“This app works only in Andhra Pradesh as far as tracking and registration are concerned, hence we are facing some problems in the border areas of Karnataka, where the signal is weak. Otherwise, the awareness created by the department has shown tremendous results with the app becoming a household name today,” the SP adds.
