All mobile phones sold in India to have mandatory panic button

NEW DELHI // All mobile phones sold in India will have to have a panic button from the start of next year, an official said Tuesday, as the country grapples with large numbers of sex crimes against women.

The button would allow users to call emergency services by pressing a single key on their phone, a telecommunications ministry official said.

“No cell phones can be sold without the provision for panic button from January 1, 2017,” he said, requesting anonymity.

The ministry said it was also making inbuilt GPS compulsory from January 1, 2018.

“Technology is solely meant to make human life better and what better than using it for the security of women,” Ravi Shankar Prasad, the telecoms minister, said late Monday.

India has struggled to curb high levels of sexual violence, a problem that shot to global prominence with the fatal gang-rape of a student in Delhi in December 2012 as she returned home from the cinema.

That incident led to an overhaul of India’s rape laws including speeding up of trials and tougher penalties for offenders, but high numbers of assaults persist.

The latest official figures show 36,735 rapes were reported across the country in 2014, although activists say the actual number is likely much higher with many crimes going unreported.

* Agence France-Presse