More and more Vizagites are registering police complaints through social media. The police have received complaints through Facebook, WhatsApp, i-Clik, and i-Report due to the increasing usage of smart phones in the city.
Reportedly, according to the Commissionerate of Police and Visakhapatnam Rural Police (VRP), 198 complaints have been received by the police through WhatsApp alone since July 2016. The city police have pointed out that complaints received via social media are given utmost importance and sorted out immediately. Nearly 10-15% of these police complaints have been considered for filing FIRs and the rest were closed down due to being fake. Of the cases that resulted in FIRs, 95% of them have been addressed.
Rural SP Rahul Dev Sharma told TOI that their WhatsApp number has received good response with 90 complaints received since July last year. They have also received complaints about ganja trade and belt shops through this medium. Circle Inspector and in-charge of these online complaints, Ch Simhadri Naidu stated that the response has been so good that they have received complaints not just from the city, but complaints have been registered from other countries too regarding illegal happenings within city limits.
The police commissionerate’s WhatsApp on the other hand was launched on New Year and has received 108 complaints already. 84 of those cases have been solved with 14 of them being serious offenses with FIRs filed. While their Facebook page received only two complaints, they received 78 complaints via e-mail.
The Abhyam App that was launched in January 2015 has had 7499 phone calls come in from across the country. But out of them, 7222 were ignored as they were test calls and only 277 calls were genuine with 55 of them considered for FIRs.
i-Report has received 404 complaints but 390 of them are test complaints and only 14 are real with eight of them registering FIRs. Videos and photos were also sent in with the complaints via this app. i-Clik received 1008 complaints with 382 considered for FIR and 611 complaints closed.
Vizag police WhatsApp number – 8142003339
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