LAHORE, Sept 14: Civil Lines police have registered first information reports (FIRs) against seven prank callers for allegedly dialing Rescue 15 number and disseminating obnoxious and fake information.

The Police Department has installed a new computerised system in the emergency service, which records every call and drops the call detected as obnoxious.

Currently, Rescue 15 is extending emergency service to people with 42 lines and staff working in three shifts. Superintendent of Police (Mujahid squad) Babar Bakht Qureshi told Dawn that of the seven accused prank callers, one such caller had dialed the Rescue 15 number 365 times in the last two weeks.

Another accused dialed the emergency number 175 times, he added.

“The majority of the calls were given from cell phones and we have blocked 8,000 such numbers in one month,” the SP said.

He said FIRs were being registered under section 506 of the Pakistan Penal Code and 29-Telegraph Act.

Capital City Police Officer Muhammad Pervez Rathore said the new computerised system would block the phone number, once declared prank caller, for sometime and any call dialed from such numbers find the emergency number engaged. “After some time of blocking the number, police will unblock the number,” he added.

He said 90,000 to 100,000 calls were given to the emergency number every day, of which only 300 to 400 were genuine.