For the past four years, IPS officer Fakkeerappa Kaginelli, who is currently serving as the SP of Anantapuram in Andhra Pradesh, has been taking proactive steps in improving the policing wherever he is being posted. His efforts have also been highlighted and awarded by the state government and private organisations. Just as he was praised for taking innovative steps in his previous two postings at Visakhapatnam and Kurnool respectively, he has now ideated and implemented another initiative in Anantapuram where lost mobiles are being found through a well-designed chatbot service.
The initiative has already benefitted thousands of people in the district as it’s a systematic design where complaints are being lodged quite easily than ever before.
SOLVING THE ISSUE
While speaking to Indian Masterminds, Dr. Fakkeerappa Kaginelli said, “Mobile phones have become an essential part of our lives as so much important data is stored in it. One whose losses it definitely has a hard time. Earlier, people who lost their cell phones, used to visit the police station to lodge a complaint and give it in writing, after which an FIR was registered. After registering the FIR, the process of tracing the mobile phones began. However, this process did not have a centralized mechanism due to which the standard procedure was not clear.”
To simplify this procedure, his team has now come up with a WhatsApp number for the public. They gave a business WhatsApp number to the people to simply file their reports of lost/stolen mobile phones on it, stating relevant information like IMEI number, last mobile number used on the phone, date and time when the mobile was lost, contact address and present details of the person.
Dr. Fakkerappa said, “Until and unless these mobile phones are activated and are used by some WiFi or any sim card, it is untraceable. We then started providing these IMEI numbers to the network providers, through which we got information about where the phones currently are.”
CHATBOT SERVICE
A special control room was set up in Anantapuram exclusively to address this issue and police officers with good communication skills were appointed to help find these lost mobile phones. Dr. Fakkerappa said, “We starting contacting people who lost the mobiles. Most of the people purchased these mobile phones from second hand mobile shops where the lost mobiles are generally sold. These people are then contacted and are convinced to surrender them back to the police. Many respond in a positive manner and some of them even came to my office to submit it.”
Another value addition which the police department made was the chatbot service in the business WhatsApp number. Those who have lost/stolen a cell phone should first send a message saying ‘Hi’ or ‘Help’ in English to WhatsApp number, 9440796812. Immediately a link named ‘Welcome to Anantapur Police’ will come. By clicking on the link, a Google form will open. In it, the details such as district, name, age, father’s name, address, contact number, lost phone model, IMEI number, missing area, etc. should be entered.
Initially the complaints were being registered only from the Anantapuram district but soon complaints started flowing from neighbouring districts and even the neigbouring states like Telangana, Karnataka, and Kerala. The phones which were being lost in the district reached all these nearby places and, hence, complaints were coming from all these places.
Around 11,253 complaints have been registered till now and out of that only 3078 IMEI numbers have been updated. Rest is yet to be updated and police is keeping a check on it. Out of the 3078 mobile phones, whose IMEI number has been updated, the police have recovered 2147 phones. 931 are still to be found.
The WhatsApp number launched by the police department spread like fire and complaints started coming from all directions. Recently, on a single day, around 300 cases were lodged through the WhatsApp number.
The retrieved phones are distributed by the IPS officer himself in his office every Monday.
