In order to protect their safety, women travelling alone on Bihar’s highways can now call the police to have their whereabouts tracked. The Bihar Police have launched a new safety effort for female travellers as festival season approaches: a monitoring system that would enable the police to follow a female traveler’s movements both digitally and physically from beginning to end.
The “Safe Travel” program would be a component of the state police’s emergency services, which can be reached by calling 112. To have the police track women on their journey, they only need to call this hotline.
With this, Bihar will become the third state, after Telangana and Haryana, to implement a system of similar kind that is exclusively applicable for road travel. Starting on September 5, the plan will be implemented as a trial in six districts: Patna, Gaya, Muzaffarpur, Bhagalpur, Begusarai, and Nalanda. On September 15, the scheme would be expanded to all 38 districts.
Bihar Additional Director General of Police (Technical and Wireless), Nirmal Kumar Azad, told reporters, “We have observed that 25 percent of callers under our emergency service of Dial 112 are women.” He also mentioned that the Safe Travel initiative would be available 24/7.
The advent of festival season, which begins with Durga Puja on October 9–13, is the immediate cause of the initiative, according to the police.
Additionally, it coincides with a nationwide outcry following the rape and murder of a doctor in Kolkata, which has reignited the conversation about women’s safety.
The event had no influence on Bihar Police’s decision, but the safety program is an extension of the state government’s “zero tolerance against crime” policy, according to sources from the CM House.
Police Monitoring and Intervention
Azad claims that a police unit will record the vehicle’s information and follow the woman who made the call in it. The cops can also access the woman’s real-time location. Local police stations will be kept vigilant in the interim. Police units have received specialised training for this. The officer stated, “The (police) team will also call the woman traveller at regular intervals and if her phone is out of reach, an emergency response vehicle will physically track down the vehicle.”
According to Azad, the program will “boost the confidence” of female travellers. She also added, “The initiative could come in handy as there could be late night travels during the coming festive season.”
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