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Mumbai: Pranks calls make disaster management cell 'barking' mad

The body is already short of hands and prank calls divert them from real emergencies.

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The city's 49-person strong Disaster Management Cell spends 40 percent of its bandwidth attending to hoax callers demanding jalebis and making canine sounds.

The cell, based of out of the civic headquarters in Fort, attended a total of 1.6 lakh calls in the last one year. However, the high number of hoax callers have impacted its daily work.

Officials say they deal with an array of prank calls – some order jalebis and samosas, others raise an alarm about fake accidents and fires; or snakes in their homes. Bizarrely, sometimes, someone just barks or meows into the receiver.

"We realise a call is a fake only after a fire brigade or civic official reaches the spot," says an official. The cell now first sends one vehicle to verify the situation. "Once we get a confirmation, we mobilise other agencies. But there is chance of losing golden hours to save life and property," he says.

The Cell gathers information from citizens and mobilizes important agencies such as the Fire Brigade, Navy, NDRF (National Disaster Response Force) to the site of an accident or calamity.

The body is already short of hands and prank calls divert them from real emergencies.

"We warn them, and even request them to not make such call," said the official, adding that this can also been reported to the police, but it is difficult to trace such callers.

Civic activist Jitendra Gupta says this shows a lack of social responsibility, adding that the acts can be curbed by meting out punishment.

Last year, a fake message was circulated on WhatsApp about cyclone Phyan approaching Mumbai. It said the spell of rain caused by the cyclone would be of the intensity or more than the one that caused the 2005 deluge.

The message also claimed that an announcement had already been made by Maharashtra's Education Minister Vinod Tawde asking schools and colleges to remain shut on that day. This forced BMC chief to write to the city police chief, requesting him to take strict action against those spreading rumours.

Act 54 of the Disaster Management states that whoever raises or circulates a false alarm or warning about a disaster or its severity, leading to panic, is punishable with imprisonment up to one year.

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