When an 11 year old boy went missing in the Indian town of Bareilly, the local police used the popular messaging app known as “WhatsApp” to send out the boy’s photo to the town folk on their mobile phones. This was possible the quickest and most efficient way to get information to the public.
A civilian that had received the message located the boy while travelling on a train. He recognized the boy as the missing individual from the police alert and made a call to the police station.
The police publicized the boy’s disappearance in many ways, with pamphlets and even chain messages.
Senior police officer SP Singh said: “The messaged reached a man called Daanish who had boarded the Doon Express train from Moradabad town. He recognized the boy from his photo.”
Another 11 year old was located the same way in Uttar Pradesh last month. After his parents posted the fact that he was missing on both Facebook and WhatsApp, he was found at the Delhi railway station.
With over 400m people using WhatsApp around the world, the app has recently been bought out by the internet giant Facebook for a price of $19bn.