Safety Mobile Apps facilitating women in fighting crime

Across India crime against women has been increasing each year. As per the National Crime Records Bureau, a female encounter’s rape or sex abuse incident every 20 minute in India. Not much has changed since the Nirbhaya incident, which drew societies attention towards need for implementing strong legal measure towards preventing crime against female. According to data uploaded on official website of Mumbai Police, Mumbai alone has witness around 27% increase in cases registered under crime against women in the last one year from 363 cases in February 2015 to 433 cases in January 2016. Detection rate compare to Cases registered has in fact decline by 1% in January & February 2016 compare to same month in 2015. Figures related to unregistered cases of rape, murder, child abuse, adds to sizable number over and above the official registered cases.

Under the following circumstances it becomes important for women / female to remain alert and practice precautionary measures to mitigate or evade an untoward scenario. Traditionally, women / female as a precautionary measure always travelled in group or accompanied themselves with a male family member or preferred visiting / associating itself with places / person which are known to her.

Modernisation brought forth several prospective opportunities to women’s / female’s, today she is both an earning member and efficient housewife today. She has been exploring technology aided solutions for her day-to-day requirement towards completing her householdwork-to-officework and also for protecting herself from untoward incidents. Technology-aided solution being the buzz word, modern women has been using it for solving or resolving several challenges encountered on daily basis. Several technology applications with feature of assisting women/ female towards curbing untoward or challenging scenario has been launched in India. Most application namely ZIMAN, VITHU: V GUMRAH INITIATIVE, SCREAM ALARM and others claim to save women against crime. Each application poses varied features with few common ones namely alerting the concern authority or pre-saved number of relatives nearest to person’s location in distress.

For instance, ‘FIR App’ launched by Police can facilitate in letting criminal record of an area, locating nearest police station, parking lot etc.

Another application Ziman, a mobile security application of Zicom- Electronic Security Systems Ltd, pioneers of Electronic Security, has a unique feature which when alarmed not only locate a person’s location to the near and dear ones but also capture images, records audio and video clips through the victim’s front and back camera in a secretive mode.

Commenting on the trend of using safety mobile applications by women / ladies across the country, Mr. Pramoud Rao, Managing Director, Zicom - Electronic Security Systems Ltd said, “Safety application is the best example as to how technology can be moulded to facilitate curb an evil which is plaguing our society in-and-out. Female citizens of this country has a fundamental right to live their life without fear. Security applications developed with advanced features will further facilitate women not only to avert an untoward incident but also in availing enough factual proof making sure that the culprit and its crime is well recognised.”     

Despite of several security applications currently in the market the need of the hour is to have an application which is not only technology savvy but also provides dedicated offline assistance such as physical calling in-case there is a complete shut down or disconnect in case of technology snag due to phone switch-off or phone engage of the concern person or authority.