KARACHI: The Sindh police have approached the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority seeking permission to use a technology that allows them to trace locations of those calling in distress for immediate action and also those who make prank calls to its helpline services so that theycould be identined and taken to task, it emerged on Wednesday.

A senior official said a request to the telecom watchdog was made by the Sindh police high-ups along with its plan to upgrade the Madadgar 15 helpline and before completing the task, they had sought control and use of the particular technology.

`It would be a kind of caller locater technology,` he said. `When someone calls Madadgar 15 helpline, his landline or mobile phone number can be seen on CLI [caller line identification], but this doesn`t help in case of emergency. Sometimes the callers are not in a position to make lengthy calls or convey their location or address.He said although the helpline service was meant for quick response in case of any criminal activity and distress situation, 90 per cent of the total calls made on these numbers were `hoax and joke calls`. This had become a nuisance for the police, he added.

Over three million prank calls `On an average, more than four million calls are being received on Madadgar 15 annually,` said the official citing the recently compiled data. `For instance, more than 3.5 million or, to be exact, 3,522,434, were prank calls registered in 2015 alone.

There has been no action against these call-ers who wasted time, energy and money of the police in a city where combating crime and effective policing is a huge challenge.

He said the police authorities were going to propose some legislation to charge those misusing Madadgar 15 by making prank calls. The department was also moving to acquire technological support for which the telecom watchdog had been approached recently, he added.

`The Sindh police have finally acquired a multimillion rupee 4G mobile phone call locator system the technology once exclusively used by intelligence agencies and handed it over to the CounterTerrorism Department. [The system] has been put at the disposal of all wings of the police department,` said the official.

`But the technology in discussion is a different thing. It`s not a kind of gadget; it`s a proper software-driven system which includes digital mapping of the city. It would show the location of a caller the moment his or her call connects to the Madadgar 15helpline.

Madadgar 15, established in 2000 at the Central Police Office, was decentralised in 2007 but the decision was reversed in 2008 and it was again centralised at the CPO. The service was then handed over to the Special Security Unit but in August 2016, it was decided to place it under the Karachi police.

Currently Madadgar 15 has 35 lines but it was being upgraded and the number of lines would be increased to make the service more effective.