Mumbai Police’s old, inoperative 'Women Safety' initiative is being circulated as PM Modi’s new initiative

A Facebook post claims that now women travelling alone at nights through autos or taxis can SMS their vehicle’s number to a helpline no. 9969777888, that helps Police to keep track of the vehicle through GPS. In the photo, Modi’s image is put beside this text to suggest that this is an initiative of Modi. Let’s try to analyze the claims made in the post.

The archived version of the post can be found here.

Claim: Modi has launched an initiative for women safety by setting up a helpline number that helps in keeping GPRS track of the vehicle that women are travelling in.
Fact: It is an old, inoperative “women safety” initiative taken up by Mumbai Police in 2014. This is now being circulated as PM Modi’s latest initiative for the safety of women. Hence, the post is MISLEADING.

When googled about this initiative using keywords “helpline no. 9969777888”, it was found that in 2014, Mumbai Police under their ‘Travel Safe When Alone’ initiative, had started an SMS helpline for women travelling alone. As part of the initiative, women travelling alone at nights through autos or taxis can SMS their vehicle’s registration number to 9969777888 that helps Police to keep track of the vehicle that the woman is taking and would get her location through GPS.

But this special helpline was later on shut down by Mumbai Police owing to the poor response from Women users.

The same news about this helpline number was spread in different cities of the country. The Police there have clarified that the existence of such helpline in those cities as untrue.