dailyO
Variety

2,300 people did nothing to stop Gurgaon man from killing himself on Facebook live: Where is India's 911?

Advertisement
DailyBite
DailyBiteAug 01, 2018 | 19:59

2,300 people did nothing to stop Gurgaon man from killing himself on Facebook live: Where is India's 911?

Suicides almost always are accompanied by a sense of disbelief and shock. However, the national capital region on Wednesday (August 1) woke up doubly shocked with newspaper headlines telling a story about how a man in Gurgaon killed himself live on Facebook with over 2,300 people watching — watching and doing nothing.

Advertisement

Facebook lives have become hugely popular not just with journalists breaking down complex stories for people too busy to read and digitally empowered with 3G and 4G data to consume news on the go. Facebook lives are popular also with people who want to show (not just tell) their friends — sometimes even foes — that they are having fun during crowded parties or solo drives.

But Facebook is also tragically bringing to our timelines live suicides.

Over the last couple of years this trend has been used repeatedly and a lot has been written about why people choose to go live with suicides.

Mental health experts, psychologists and psychiatrists have analysed the situation differently. But the common consensus seems to be that live suicides are a 'call for help' — a call that mostly the person taking the drastic step is also not able to comprehend.

However, the Gurgaon case has also brought to light a shocking case of passive watchers who did not do anything to stop the untoward from happening.

So what held back the over 2,300 Facebook users, who saw 27-year-old Jatoli resident Amit Chauhan kill himself, from at least trying to save him?

Advertisement

A simple dismissal saying we are a bunch of insensitive people is not good enough because people in India's small towns and villages still reach out to their neighbours in times of emergencies, including cases where medical help is needed.

Tragically, we in India still do not know who to reach out to in emergency situation such as live suicides.

Sitting in India, a lot of us know that US citizens call on 911 in times of distress and that Australians dial 000 as the emergency service number, but ask around what's the emergency number to call in India and chances are that you'll be met with blank looks.

Indians living in cities still run people in need of medical care to hospitals in cars because many of us do not know or remember the number to dial for an ambulance, or the fire brigade.

While Indian government did decide to come up with such a number — 112 — in 2017, there is hardly any awareness about it. Calls made to this number during the research for this piece from post paid mobile numbers were met with responses like there isn't sufficient balance to connect the call to wait for opreator assistance. That is not a response you expect from an emergency helpline. 

Advertisement

facebook690_080118071522.jpg
Facebook users in India may find it easier to notify Facebook about what is being streamed live than alert their own agencies about it. (Source: India Today)

We do not know because there hasn't been enough advocacy work done in the country to raise awareness on the issue.

There isn't one umbrella number which can take care or transfer calls to the relevant response agency. India's helpline numbers are too diverse and scattered and none of the services actually talk to each other.

Our best response is to call 100, but the service response to a call made on this number is not effective enough across the country. It actually only connects us to the police.

Chauhan began a live Facebook video shortly after his wife walked out around 7pm on July 30 with the couple's two children after a fight over some issue. Over the next one hour, Chauhan prepared a noose to hang himself as over 2,000 clueless people watched.

The police reached the spot only the next day around 10am by when the family had cremated the body. In this day and age of mobile connectivity in a country that is talking about digital revolution that it took over 15 hours for the police to even get to know about the incident is a statement on our emergency response systems.

An average Indian is too tied up in his/her struggles of everyday life, which includes water entering houses after even a brief spell of rain to proving his nationality in his own country. It is for this reason that processes need to be simplified for people to follow them.

Facebook users in India may find it easier to notify Facebook about what is being streamed live than alert their own agencies about it.

Not everybody using Facebook in India is aware enough that a live suicide can be possibly stopped simply by making a call.

Emergency helpline numbers such as 911 and 000 work very efficiently because western tele communication companies have implemented location tracking into their devices over the years.

In India we prefer to stand and watch because action is cumbersome.

Even reporting an accident to 100 in Delhi is cumbersome because it takes a while to explain locations to operators and then responding officials. A technologically advanced system should allow the operator to pick the caller's location and pass it on to the PCR that is tasked with responding.

Facebook on its part is talking about increasing manpower to stop this trend. The social networking giant, which has over 2 billion users, has also spoken about how improved artificial intelligence (AI) will help deal with the problem.

But Facebook can't stop such acts from happening either through human intervention or deployment of AI. It can at best take the message to a wide network of people that someone somewhere is about to end his life.

In that way Facebook is already doing its job.

It is our failure if we have not been able to use that information to stop it from happening.

Truth be told, it wouldn't be possible to stop all of them. But in some cases it is a definite possibility.

In January 2017, a 28-year-old man in Bangkok, Thailand, consumed pesticide on a Facebook live in a bid to end his life. The man could be rescued because his friend saw the video.

In May 2017, another man was saved from dying after he consumed poison because people who saw his Facebook live reached out to help.

The government needs to learn from successful examples of systems working across the world and come up with a system in India so that we don't watch helplessly without knowing that we can help save someone from dying.

Last updated: August 01, 2018 | 19:59
IN THIS STORY
Please log in
I agree with DailyO's privacy policy