Social Media in India is always in the news for wrong reasons, but this time social media app like WhatsApp made a news for saving life of a person.
Gaurav Arora, a defence research scholar hailing from Delhi and working in Bangalore went missing during a hiking trip in the Madhugiri mountain 60 km from Bangalore, where he was trapped for almost 10 hours after he fell 300 feet down the mountain. What saved him and helped him getting rescued is pictures that was sent by him to his friend from popular messaging app - WhatsApp.
Gaurav could not be traced for several hours as he was trapped in the underbrush of mountain and was unable to move due to severe injuries. He tried calling his friend however there was no sufficient network coverage for a call to make. He then click a picture of the location where he had fallen and send it to Priyank, who had accompanied him during the mountain climb but stopped on the way. This picture sent by him helped police to trace him out.
The police and fire service officials finally found Arora after 10 hours of entrapment at around at 1.30 am and rescued him at 2 am on Monday morning. He then shifted to hospital and is now out of danger.
The picture sent by Gaurav via WhatsApp helped police and fire team to find him, despite rescue operations being carried out after sunset. "We noticed that Madhugiri town was visible in the picture and based on that information, we managed to reach the spot where he had fallen," said Madhugiri police inspector C Girish Nayak.
The incident clearly speaks the benefits of smartphones and messaging apps like WhatsApp though WhatsApp doesn't have any GPS or location tracking feature nonetheless it helped a person to save his life. The Bangalore techie clearly used his presence of mind as well as the technology he was having in his hand at that point of time.
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