Bizarre calls flood Malda Police helpline, legal action being taken under Section 135 of BNSS

Malda: In a string of increasingly strange incidents, the Malda district police control room has been receiving bizarre calls on the emergency helpline 100 — calls that are testing the patience of officers tasked with maintaining law and order in this sensitive border district.

It was around midnight when one such call came in. A heavily intoxicated man, struggling to speak clearly, said: “Hello... I’ve had too much to drink. I can’t remember the way home.” In another case, a caller simply asked: “Hello... how are you?”— leaving officers baffled and frustrated.

These types of prank or drunken calls are not isolated events. According to Malda’s Superintendent of Police, Pradeep Kumar Yadav, the control room receives more than 500 calls daily, a large portion of which are irrelevant. “100 is an emergency number, meant to report real dangers. These absurd calls not only waste police time but can also block genuine emergency callers from getting through,” he stated.

Located near the borders of Bangladesh, Bihar and Jharkhand, Malda requires constant vigilance. To curb such nuisance behavior, the police have started identifying and tracking callers misusing the helpline. Legal action is being taken under Section 135 of the BNSS, with offenders bound down in SDM court and made to give written assurances that they won’t repeat the behavior.

Police sources say several individuals have already been charged, with their phone numbers and locations tracked. However, not all calls are troublesome. Some come from elderly citizens living alone who seek help for food or medicine — requests the police try to fulfill with compassion.

While they crack down on the misuse of emergency services, the Malda police continue to uphold their duty to respond with care where it’s truly needed.