Police trace missing through ‘Gumshuda’ app

Kuldip Bhatia

Ludhiana, July 19

Commissioner of Police (CP) Rakesh Agrawal today dwelt upon the success achieved by the use of innovative mobile appplication ‘Gumshuda’ for tracing missing persons, saying the app had been developed after it was strongly felt to use technology to match details of missing persons with recovered persons.

Interacting with mediapersons here, he said the police achieved a major success when a 10-year-old boy, Kartik, a resident of Jagraon, went missing from his home on the evening of July 14. He was taken to the police post at the bus stand where his entry was made on the ‘found persons’ list on the app. The parents were able to find their son when they got uploaded their son’s picture on the app through their relatives.

Giving details of the earlier cases traced with the help of the mobile application, the CP said in March, an 80-year old woman, Maya Devi, of Ganesh Nagar in the city had gone missing and was found by a public-spirited person who found her unaware of her whereabouts. He reported her as a ‘found person’ and uploaded her photo in the app. The app, using the facial recognition, gave a match with the missing report entry of Maya Devi. He contacted SHO Division No 3 as mentioned in the profile and the SHO Jarnail Singh sent his team to get her reunited with her family.

Agrawal said in another success story, a 26-year-old mentally challenged person, Maninderjeet Singh, a resident of Moga district, who was missing since March 1, 2021, was found by an NGO in the area of Dehlon police station.

“With the help of the app, volunteers of the NGO identified him and contacted the Dehlon SHO, who made arrangements for reuniting Maninderjeet with his family in no time.

The app could also be used by parents to report their missing children and by vigilant citizens to report any vulnerable children found on streets. So far, the data of about 3,300 persons (missing and found) has been uploaded on the app.

The Commissioner of Police made special mention of a city boy, Bharat Sood, who had helped develop the mobile app. The ‘Gumshuda’ app can be downloaded on android phones using the link https://play.google.com/ store/apps/details?id=com.punjab.police.child.missing.gumshuda.gumshuda_app.