City police follow Varkala model, adopt Road Vigil app

TNN | Apr 6, 2020, 04:40 IST

Thiruvananthapuram: The city police have adopted a hi-tech way to nab motorists roaming in the city unnecessarily during the lockdown period. On Saturday onwards the city police started using a mobile phone app to track the movements of the vehicles roaming on city roads. The app, called Road Vigil, was first put to use by Varkala police and following its success, the city police decided to use it too.
“We have instructed maximum number of cops on roads to download the app on their phones. The results will start to show within a day,” said city police commissioner Balramkumar Upadhyay. The city have police check points at as many as 32 major locations, including 16 entry/exit points in the outskirts and 16 inner points. Besides this, small groups of officers are conducting random checks on roads. All of them have installed the app, he said.
The concept of the app was put forward by Varkala Janamaithri beat officer ASI Jayaprasad. He encouraged his neighbour Shibin A S, managing director of startup firm Catchacloud Technologies Private Limited, to come up with an app that helps track motorists. Shibin joined hands with associate developer Abhinanth S to develop the app within three days.
When a motorist is checked by cops at a checking point, they would enter the registration number of the vehicle and the purpose of the trip in the app in their phone.
The same information will be immediately synced to the mobile phone devices of cops on duty at other checking points. If the motorist roams around unnecessarily and is caught by the cops at any other location, he/she cannot use the same excuse they used earlier as the police already have the information of their trip.
The Varkala police had started using the app officially from Tuesday onwards.
The commissioner on Sunday afternoon spoke with the representatives of around 100 residents’ associations in the city and gave them directions regarding the things to be followed during the lockdown through video conferencing.
The video conference was held through a mobile phone app at 12.30pm. He spoke with the residents for 30 minutes and even cleared doubts raised by the latter.
The commissioner has said that he will continue to reach out to more residents through this technology in the coming days.
On Sunday, the police booked as many as 98 persons for breaching lockdown rules. Out of this, 92 were booked under the State Epidemic Diseases Act.