Needed: A helpline for women cops
Cops handling the Delhi Police helpline could do with some help as they are getting abusive or obscene calls, writes Rajnish Singh

Are you single or married?," "What’s your phone number, sweetie?", "Main tumse shaadi karna chahta hoon"... are some of the pesky calls that women cops handling the Delhi Police’s women’s helpline have to contend with daily. More than 40 per cent of the women cops, who handle the women’s helpline, receive abusive or obscene calls. The callers are not even deterred by the fact that they are speaking to policewomen. Set up more than five years ago to protect the Capital’s women from abuse and harassment, the helpline, 1091, receives around 60 to 70 calls daily. At one time, there are four women constables handling the helpline in each eight-hour shift. A total of 12 women police work round the clock in three shifts.

Of the daily calls, more than 40 per cent calls consists of men being abusive to the women operators or indulging in lewd talk, according to Additional Commissioner of Police (Police Control Room) G. C. Dwivedi. "On a daily basis, 21 per cent of the calls the women cops get are regarding domestic violence, 17 per cent calls are on eve teasing and 22 per cent about cyber crimes involving women victims," he says. "However, around 40 per cent of the daily calls are obscene and abusive," adds Dwivedi. According to Dwivedi, there are two categories of callers who make 40 per cent frivolous calls.

"In the first category are the people who call just for entertainment. They register false complaints and use the pretext to trouble and abuse the women operators — just for a laugh. The second category is of those who indulge in obscene chats with the operators," laments Dwivedi.

A woman helpline operator, speaking on the condition of anonymity, says she has been working on the helpline desk for two years and receives such calls daily. "Such callers do not care that they are talking to a Delhi Police officer. Those who are young make such calls from phone booths so that they are not caught," says one of the woman constables. — IANS

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