MUMBAI: There was a tone of urgency in the caller’s voice when GRP constable Rakesh Meher answered the phone on a Tuesday evening. The caller said a passenger had fallen off a train between Vidyavihar and Kurla . Meher tapped a large screen in front of him and on an interactive map, he searched for patrolling railway cops whose location was closest to the accident spot. On locating a field agent near the spot, Meher set up a conference call with him and the eyewitness. Once he confirmed that the field agent had all details from the eyewitness and was headed to attend to the accident victim, Meher logged out.Meher works at Government Railway Police’s (GRP) statewide toll-free helpline, 1512, which is the only helpline in the country that traces the location of cops on the ground using a tracking software and facilitates one-to-one communication between them and passengers in distress.Launched in October 2017, the helpline has received over 20,600 calls in a year. The highest number of calls (67%) pertained to lost baggage and over 1,000 callers reported altercations in trains or station areas. “Calls peak during morning and evening rush hours. Complaints vary from reports of drunk men entering ladies compartments, stone-pelting cases to bhajans being played in coaches,” says assistant inspector Deepak Wakchaure, who heads one of the shifts. “The helpline has also received a call about a human trafficking case.”Following a positive response from commuters about the helpline, the GRP have done away with help-desks at railway stations. “We found that helpdesks weren’t always manned. In some cases, a help-desk was not located on the platform where a passenger in distress alighted from a train. Passengers cannot be expected to go to other platforms looking for help. Dialling a helpline is easier,” says additional director general of police (railways) Jaijeet Singh.Twelve bilingual operators work in two shifts of six each at the helpline’s control room in Wadi Bunder. For every call answered by an operator, an entry-—it is referred to as a ticket—is generated in the computer. A ticket that is pending for an hour turns red attracting the attention of the superior handling the shift. The superior is also supposed to later gather feedback from passengers to verify if they had received timely help.The helpline uses a resource tracking software that plots the location of every field agent on an interactive map on a large screen. “The field agents have to download a location tracking app on their smartphone and turn it on when they report for duty,” says GRP commissioner Niket Kaushik. By tapping the screen, operators can zoom in or out of any geographical area on the map. The agents’ name and contact details pop up on the map whenever an operator wants to look them up. In a corner of the screen, operators have access to the duty rosters of cops at every GRP outpost. On a separate screen below, operators receive calls and generate tickets. When a call comes in, the operator jots down the train details, coach location and nature of grievance and alerts the field agent closest to the spot.Businessman Raman Agarwal, who had left behind his laptop in a Kalyan-CSMT train on October 22, said he got it back in less than hour, thanks to the helpline. “I got off at CSMT and was glued to my phone. Only after the train left did I realise that my laptop was on the overhead rack. I dialled the helpline and the operator checked the train details and said it was heading to Khopoli. At Byculla station, a field agent retrieved my laptop. I was relieved as my business would have suffered in the absence of crucial accounting data on my laptop,” Agarwal told TOI.Meher says, “None of the calls are dismissed as trivial. Besides, seniors call up at any time to check on our work, so we are always on our toes.”

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