Cellular app to assist Indian ladies fight sex assault
NEW DELHI: A smartphone app launched Wednesday in the Indian capital Delhi aims to combat a rise in sexual assault instances by enabling
girls to instantly notify friends or family if they feel at risk.
The Fight Again app created by Indian non-earnings Whypoll will — at the press of a simple essential — ship an SOS message by way of text message, e-mail and Facebook.
As soon as the SOS is activated, recipients will be able to track the sender’s
location via GPS and arrive to her support.
I grew up in Delhi and it can be constantly been an unsafe town. And it just retains finding even worse. As a female, you just don’t feel comfy on the roadways, Whypoll co-founder Shweta Punj told AFP.
I was disgusted by the violence and needed to do something about it.
Delhi now tops the listing of India’s most unsafe cities for ladies, with 489 reported rape cases in 2010, up from 459 in 2009,two fat ladies, according to police statistics.
India’s quick economic expansion has thrown open up new occupation chances for ladies, but several truly feel at risk of harassment or assault even though travelling on their possess to and from work.
In a 2010 survey by the Delhi govt, the United Nations and women’s rights group Jagori (Wake Up Girls),two fat ladies, forty five percent of ladies stated they averted stepping out on your own soon after darkish and 65 p.c feared using manifeste transportation.
The survey also advised that police needed to perform a more powerful role in
safeguarding the rights of females.
According to Whypoll co-founder Hindol Sengupta, while customers can choose to consist of a number for the Delhi police in their SOS shortlist, the principal concentrate of the app is to alert pals and household.
Indians count far more on their in close proximity to and expensive ones simply because we never trust the system to help us, Sengupta told AFP.
The moment you send out the SOS, your buddies and family members will just take it up with the police and stress them into carrying out one thing.
It is unclear how the police will deal with grievances sent to them by way of Fight Again — created to perform with Nokia, Samsung, HTC and BlackBerry smartphones.
A number of police officers contacted by AFP explained they ended up unaware of the app’s existence.
Sengupta admitted that the success of Fight Back would hinge on the
police’s effectivity and willingness to take up reported cases.
There is no magic answer to this dilemma, but we are in talks with the police and we hope the app will help them react fast in such scenarios.
The Battle Back again app is priced at 100 rupees ($1.ninety) for a year’s use.
At the moment obtainable only in English, the creators program to supply it in Indian languages and increase its attain to include nine much more cities by the stop of 2012.
The app arrives a yr right after volunteer activists in Egypt launched HarassMap, an initiative which asks girls to send text messages with facts of their spot when they encounter sexual harassment.
The purpose of HarassMap is to develop a map of hotspots in which females are a lot more most likely to be assaulted and demand an enhanced police presence in those spots. (AFP)