UP women helpline staff facing harassment

The much-publicised helpline set up by UP chief minister Akhilesh Yadav to deal with the harassment of women through abusive calls and stalking is in dire need of help itself as the women personnel working here are now becoming victims of such calls.

“We get abusive calls on the helpline, the callers make sexual overtures and abuse us. This is now becoming a routine feature. When this started, we made attempts to track down the number but found that majority of them had been issued on fake IDs. We cannot pursue our own cases because of an acute shortage of staff here and even our seniors do not take us seriously,” said a staff member. According to the women constables, part of the special force for the helpline, their harassment begins with the counselling of the accused.

“When we receive any complaint, we are required to counsel the accused and if he persists, we take action against him. In most cases, the accused misbehaves with us and turns abusive. Though he stops harassing the complainant, but he continues to misbehave with us. Our seniors do not take this seriously and ask us to deal with the situation ourselves,” said a woman personnel on condition of anonymity.