New Delhi, Oct 13 : Women will soon be able to
fight off potential attackers with a push of a phone button that will alert not
only friends, family and police but also sound an alarm on their social
networking websites.
One in every four rapes in India occurs in New
Delhi, police say, with reports
of women being bundled into moving cars and gang-raped before
being dumped on roadsides, giving the city an unsavoury reputation as the "rape
capital" of the nation. There is one rape every 18 hours, according to police.
The phone app "Fight Back" will be launched in November by a
local charity and will function as an SOS alert device -- sending out a text
message with a GPS location to up to five people, including police, and as a
post on Facebook and Twitter.
"Safety for women has become such a huge issue here and we felt
that citizens of Delhi, where possibly the problem exists the most, could use
this type of technological intervention," said Hindol Sengupta, co-founder of
Whypoll, which created the application.
"Women are harassed and molested everywhere on buses, at metro
stations, in markets ... we believe this is Asia's first phone application aimed
at making women safer."
In conservative and largely patriarchal India, women face a
barrage of threats ranging from forced marriage and dowry murders to human
trafficking, domestic violence, "honour killings" and abduction as well as
sexual harassment and rape.
Rape cases in India increased by 760.4% to
21,397 cases in 2009 from 2,487 in 1971, according to latest figures from the
National Crime Records Bureau.
But activists say this is a gross underestimation of the actual
number of crimes, with most women afraid to go to police, fearing stigma and
family dishonour.
While male attitudes towards women have improved over the last
two decades due to greater awareness, the dangers to women remain starkly
evident -- particularly in New Delhi.
The "Fight Back" app will initially be available to download
from the Whypoll website (www.whypoll.org) for a nominal fee and will be supported by a range of mobile devices
such as Nokia and BlackBerry. SOS alerts will cost the same as an SMS.
Sengupta said the app, which is part of the Whypoll's "Safe in
the City" campaign, will also map the SOS alerts to build an accurate database
of where and what gender-related crimes occur.
"We have created a platform where women can remain anonymous yet
the incident will still be recorded and reflected on a map on our website --
which will help us push for action in places where there appears to be increased
risks to women," he said.