Facebook's Ireland headquarters on Saturday night made a call to the police and the attempts made by Delhi and Mumbai police saved the life of a 25-year-old man, who started putting up several Facebook Live videos of him wanting to attempt suicide.
Three DCPs in Delhi and Mumbai, and a police inspector and his wife, saved the man in Mumbai.
At 7:51 pm on Saturday, a call from Ireland came for DCP (Cyber Cell-Delhi) Anyesh Roy. Roy stated that on the other side of the phone was an official from Facebook and he stated that Facebook had identified suicidal activity on an account belonging to a Delhi resident. IP logs, Facebook account details were shared by Facebook officials with Delhi police. The account had a phone number registered for the account.
Roy said that the police immediately started tracking the number.
DCP (East) Jasmeet Singh was approached by Roy as the number was traced to Mandawali, an East Delhi locality. The Station House Officer of Madhu Vihar nearby went to the address associated with the account and found a woman, who said that the phone number told to her was of hers but the Facebook account was being used by her husband, who went to Mumbai following a fight with her and she had no clue about where her husband was staying in Mumbai.
Mumbai Police took up the case
Roy informed the case to Dr Rashmi Karandikar, DCP (Cyber) in Mumbai, by 9:30 pm. Dr Karandikar said, "The man's wife gave us his number, and I kept calling but either it was switched off or he wouldn't take the calls.
She added that attempts were on to trace the number for finding the man's location. Inspector Pramod Khopikar from Dr Karandikar's unit was calling the man and his wife continuously.
Khopikar said that after several unsuccessful calls to the man, he asked the wife to leave some emotional messages and voice notes for the man and also post pictures of their child and inform the police as soon as she sees blue ticks on the messages.
The man saw her messages around 11:30 pm. Khopikar further said, "Then I asked her to call him, and guided her on how to add me on a conference call. It didn't work, so I called him and added her to the conversation, while a team traced his location. For over an hour, he cried and argued with his wife and I listened. He kept saying he wanted to end his life and had tried twice already."
While all this was going on, the man's location was traced to Bhayandar, and local police rushed to the spot immediately.
The man was stressed about his salary, which had gone down due to coronavirus.
The man was counselled
Khopikar tried counseling the couple but realized that it wasn't making any difference so he put his wife on the call to counsel the man. When the man said that he was facing financial troubles, Khopikar said that he has a car registered with Ola and he could drive that to earn money.
By 3 am, Bhayandar Police personnel reached the 25-year-old and counselled him. Khopikar cut the call only after the man felt better and said he was fine now. He called up the man again the next day at 10 am to check on him and he thanked police personnel saying that he was doing fine.
