Mumbai: Man slitting throat on Facebook live rescued

Alarmed Facebook employees from Ireland Mumbai cops, who trace location and send Dhule cops to 23-year-old's home in the nick of time

FB's headquarters in Dublin, Ireland, informed the Mumbai police's Cyber Cell. Representation pic

A facebook algorithm to prevent suicides and self harm, the Mumbai police's Cyber Cell and the Dhule police got together to save the life of a 23-year-old man who tried to commit suicide on Sunday. The man, who slashed his neck several times with a sharp-edged instrument, was on Facebook live. The technology conglomerate's international headquarters in Dublin, Ireland, after being alerted by its algorithm, informed the Mumbai police's Cyber Cell DCP Dr Rashmi Karandikar immediately and within an hour, he was traced.

The race against time to save him began when Karandikar received a call. "On Sunday at around 8:10 pm I received a call from an officer of Facebook's international headquarters in Ireland, saying a man near Mumbai was trying to commit suicide. He was seen in a video slashing his throat four to five times with a sharp-edged instrument. The officer shared the man's video and Facebook account details," said Karandikar.

In the video the man can be heard speaking in Marathi, "Me aaj suicide kartoy. He lok jababdar ahet (I am committing suicide today. These people are responsible)." He then takes the names of four people and says, "He mala khoop traas detayat aani me ata marnaar ahe. He bagha rakta, (They are harassing me and I am going to die. See, blood)." He then slashes his throat five times. While the language could not be comprehended by the Facebook algorithm, blood in the video led it to alert officers.

Acting quickly, the Mumbai Cyber Cell team managed to find the cellphone number of the person which he used to login, within 10 minutes."Three numbers were used to login into the particular Facebook account, and we tried to contact all the numbers but they were switched off. We had very little time to save the life of the person in the video. We got his pin point location which was in Dhule," Karandikar added.

After getting his location in Dhule's Bhoi Society, the Mumbai Cyber Cell then informed Dhule SP Chinmay Pandit and Nashik range IG Pratap Dighavkar at around 8:30pm. Following this, the Dhule police reached the spot at 9 pm and found the person unconscious on the floor and bleeding heavily."We immediately rushed him to a nearby hospital and now he is out of danger. He has been discharged and we will counsel him," said Pandit, SP Dhule.

According to the police, after he gained consciousness, he identified himself as Dnyaneshwar Patil. He said that he had consumed liquor after he was bullied by his friends and wanted to end his life. Patil's mother is a Home Guard in Dhule.

This is not the first time the Mumbai police's Cyber Cell has turned saviour to those trying to kill themselves. Since August 2020, they have saved the lives of at least five people (including Patil) who showed suicidal tendencies on Facebook, or tried to commit suicide.

The first case

In August a 24-year-old chef from Delhi, who was in Mumbai, tried to kill himself due to financial stress caused by the lockdown. After he mentioned this on Facebook, its headquarters alerted the Delhi police who contacted DCP Karandikar. The Cyber Cell then saved the man.

Spurned man held

In the month of September, the cyber unit saved a 21-year-old Vakola resident from committing suicide. She was frustrated after getting abusive calls from more than 300 unknown people. A person in her locality was allegedly involved in her getting the calls. According to the police, he was angry that she had twice rejected his friend request on Instagram. The police counselled her and arrested the accused in just 24 hours.

Deleted pictures

A 20-year-old girl tried to end her life by slashing her wrist in Mumbai after she came to know that her morphed photographs were uploaded on a porn website. Her mother approached the Cyber police who counselled the girl and managed to delete all the photos from the porn website within 24 hours.

Saved by Twitter

In the month of October, a man from West Bengal tweeted to the Mumbai police saying his niece sent him a message saying she was going to end her life. The Cyber police and Nehru Nagar police tracked down the woman within four hours. According to the police, the 30-year-old woman, who works as a software engineer in the city, was traced to a residential complex in Tilak Nagar. The police found that she had sent the WhatsApp message in distress, as she was depressed that her mother and uncle were planning to sell their flat in Kolkata against her wishes.

The algorithm

In 2017 Facebook launched its project to prevent suicides and self harm through artificial intelligence. The suicide prevention algorithm scans people's posts for potential suicide risk. The algorithm sees nearly every post on Facebook.

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