The past few months have taught us the importance of suicide awareness and prevention, of recognising signs of a suicidal person up-front and/or on social media and act accordingly to help him/her out of possible self-harm. Even social media platforms are working towards locating suicidal activity in various accounts and try their best in preventing it.
In one such incident, Facebook headquarters in Ireland was able to locate suicidal activity from the account of a 25-year-old Indian man. According to a report by The Indian Express, the man had put up several Facebook Live videos of himself in which he claimed to be wanting to attempt suicide.
At 7.51 PM, Delhi’s Cyber Cell received a call from the Facebook Headquarters notifying them of the activity. They said that the Facebook account belonged to a man living in Delhi. They went on to provide the cyber cell with the necessary IP logs, the Facebook account, videos the user has posted, and a phone number registered with the account.
Delhi police began tracking the number. It led them to Mandawali, an East Delhi locality. On reaching the address, they found a woman who said she has no idea about the videos. However, she revealed that the account was indeed registered in her number and was being used by her husband who now lives in Mumbai.
She also went on to reveal that she and her husband had a massive fight recently.
At 9.30 PM, Delhi Police notified Mumbai Police of the incident. After the woman gave her husband’s current phone number to the police, they started calling him frantically. But, the man’s phone was either switched off or he wasn’t picking it up.
Inspector Pramod Khopikar, Cyber Unit – Mumbai, asked the man’s wife to leave him emotional voice-notes, pictures of their son, and to inform the police once she sees “blue ticks”.
At 11. 30 PM, the man’s wife claimed that he saw her messages. Inspector Khopikar then called the man and added his wife in a conference call. On one hand, the husband kept arguing with the wife on call and said that he wanted to die. But on the other hand, the police were trying to track him down.
They found his location in Bhayandar and rushed to the address.
The man was worried about money, because the COVID-19 pandemic had caused financial distress, and about getting infected by the virus.
“The trick was to keep him engaged, and tell him that he is loved and cared for by his wife, and all of us in Delhi and Mumbai Police,” Khopikar said.
Khopikar went on to add his wife to the conference call who tried to calm the man. She said that she too had fights with her husband but were still together. She also lied about Khopikar being infected by COVID-19 but later recovering to ease him down.
By 3 AM, Bhayandar police had reached the man’s location and counselled him out of suicide. It was only when the police were convinced that the man felt better that they cut the call.
Inspector Khopikar offered the man to drive his car which was registered with Ola to earn money. He also asked the wife to go to Mumbai to be with her husband.
Even though the man is now doing better, the police have promised to keep a tab on him.
Kudos to Mumbai and Delhi police for their prompt action! It is because of them that a man’s life was saved.