UTTAR PRADESH: In a startling revealation that came to light following the inspection conducted by the Uttar Pradesh Police, it has been known that women’s mobile numbers are being sold from as less as Rs. 50 for men who care to spare the cash.
The racket was broken by Navneit Sekera, an inspector general of police who played a crucial role in setting up the helpline of 1090. He says that anonymity is the key to the whole operation. The vendor at the recharge shop is usually the third party who helps buy these innocent girls’ Sim cards with fake IDs and then stacks their personal information to be handed out later.
24 year old Mohammed of Shahjahanpur confessed to have been having some ‘harmless fun’ through these means. “We go there when the owner is away at the shop run by our favourite recharge outlet,” he says. He and his friends then use the mobile numbers given by the owner’s son to strike friendships. “Sometimes we send inappropriate pictures over WhatsApp,” he admits.
There are a little over 6 lakh complaints registered in Uttar Pradesh of which 90% are harassment calls. What these harassers think of as harmless fun tends to be a source of constant menace for the victims. These calls come mostly at night and have the person on the phone talking abusive and vulgar language. Under the helpline, people have been allotted to reach out to the perpetrators and give them warnings. Rajesh Pratap Yadav is one of them who deals with around a 100 complaints a day. “I call the men. There are all kinds of them: young, old, teenagers, rural, urban, working or unemployed. Some say ‘she is my girlfriend who has stopped talking to me, some say ‘I dialed the number by mistake.”
Although the statistics say that this is one of the leading causes of torture to the other gender, it is an irony that this is still not considered as a ‘serious crime’. “Koi crime nahin banega,” (No crime will be made out) says IG Sekera. The police, instead, go after those recharge vendors who enable the purchase of SIM cards under fake identity. “We have booked three recharge guys so far under Section 467 for dealing in false documents,” he says. But that is a far cry from the justice that is truly needed. Criminal lawyers such as Avninder Singh feel that more stringent action is needed. “It’s a breach of trust. The woman has shared her phone number with the recharge person on the assumption of trust. If he sells her information, he is guilty of exchanging that privilege for economic advantage, a criminal offence punishable with as much as seven years in jail. He is also abetting phone stalking.”
The bids for the digits start at 50 rupees for ‘ordinary looking girls’ and go for upto 500 rupees for ‘beautiful’ ones. Makes you wonder who gave these vendors the right to categorise the ladies and sell their private information of mobile numbers that they have been entrusted with. This is just a small example of the general direction that the Country is going in apart from all the advancements women have made. For example, just a few days ago, the social space saw the picture of a Maharashtra State Board of Secondary and Higher Education for class XII Social Standard book circulating that had lines like ‘for girls who are ugly, dowry rate needs to be more’. Such gems of information lead us to think if we will ever be stuck in a consistent state of a developing country or worse, start regressing.
