Walking down a lonely road? Or nervous about your cab driver? Help could be summoned at the press of a button. In a significant push towards women's safety, all mobile manufacturers will produce handsets with a panic button from January 1, 2017, with a notification to be issued this week, sources said. This facility will allow a person to long press a set of buttons which will send out an alert to the user's family or friends, besides information on the location. The move comes after hectic negotiations by the ministries of women and child development and IT and telecommunications. "This is one of the key projects that will be funded through the Nirbhaya fund set up by the UPA government," a source said.

For existing phones, talks are underway and a plan is yet to be finalised. "We are working towards a software that can be downloaded which will have the same function as the panic button. For those with ordinary handsets, we are talking to manufacturers so that the user can go to a service centre and get the application for free," the official said.

Establishing a panic button on phones was one of the suggestions floated in the aftermath of the Nirbhaya gangrape in December 2012.