By TIOL News Service

NEW DELHI, APR 04, 2025: AS part of its ongoing efforts for ensuring safety and security of the citizens in the digital ecosystem, the Department of Telecommunications (DoT) has joined hands with the Railway Protection Force (RPF), Ministry of Railways for ensuring mobile safety of the passengers travelling in trains.

Mobile Phones constitute a major portion of items lost or misplaced by passengers in trains and at stations. DoT and RPF will work in collaboration for tracing and recovering lost/stolen mobile phones of train passengers. The Rail Madad app is now being interfaced with the DoT's Sanchar Saathi platform.

The Sanchar Saathi platform of DoT has the facility of blocking the reported stolen/lost mobile handsets, while Rail Madad app is a mobile application developed by Indian Railways to assist passengers in addressing and resolving their complaints or grievances during their train journeys.

In this direction, the onboarding of 17 Zones and 70+ Divisions of RPF has been started at Sanchar Saathi portal. Now the passengers can lodge complaint about the lost/stolen mobile handset at Rail Madad App. The complaints details will in turn be imported to Sanchar Saathi portal for blocking of lost/stolen mobile handset for preventing its misuse, enabling its tracing and alert generation to the RPF.

A training session was organized for the RPF officers of 17 Divisions of Indian Railways, which was attended by 250+ officers. The officers of LSA field units of DoT also attended the session. In the training session, DoT officials briefed them about the citizen centric Sanchar Saathi portal/App and its features on mobile safety. They were also briefed on various other technological solutions to tackle emerging challenges.

Inaugurating the training session as part of the collaborative effort, Dr Neeraj Mittal, Secretary (Telecom), in his keynote address, lauded the collaboration and spoke on the key role of technology as an enabler in enhancing security measures. He said, "With the rapid advancement of technology, the role of digital tools in crime prevention and law enforcement is more critical than ever." He further highlighted that onboarding RPF on Sanchar Saathi portal is a milestone in the journey of protecting the citizens from cyber frauds and misuse of telecom resources.

Manoj Yadav, Director General RPF, in his inaugural address, shared that safety and security of the railway passengers is a key objective of RPF. In last 12 months, RPF has successfully recovered and handed over items worth Rs 84 crores to the railway passengers as part of Operation Aamanat. He further emphasized "The onboarding of RPF at Sanchar Saathi portal will give an assurance of recovery of the lost/stolen handsets to the citizens."

The Railway Protection Force (RPF) has been the backbone of railway security, ensuring the safety of passengers and protecting railway assets with utmost dedication. Since its establishment in 1957, RPF has played a crucial role in securing one of the world's largest railway networks. Integration with Sanchar Saathi will be a game changer in enhancing mobile safety. State police across the country are doing a commendable job in utilizing the Sanchar Saathi system to recover mobile phones and hand them over to their rightful owners. Till date, using CEIR facility of Sanchar Saathi, about 30 lakh mobile devices have been blocked, out of which around 18 lakh mobile devices have been traced, and 3.87 lakh mobile handsets have been successfully recovered by the police. The state police of Telangana, Maharashtra, and Karnataka have demonstrated outstanding efforts in leveraging this system to enhance public security and service.

Additionally, the DoT encourages citizens to continue reporting lost/stolen mobile phones through the CEIR module of Sanchar Saathi (www.sancharsaathi.gov.in), fostering a collaborative effort to make telecom services more secure and user-friendly. The Department remains dedicated to strict monitoring and prompt action to protect consumer interests.