Today’s newspaper article is from “The Washington
Post” and talks about a help line for women that has been set up in New Delhi:
In New Delhi, a help line
for women is flooded with calls
NEW DELHI — The phones ring without a break.
On one line, a girl says she was raped by a
neighbor.
“Please do not tell my parents because they
will stop me from going out of the house,” the caller, who says she’s 15,
pleads with a help-line attendant. “Do not tell the police either because I don’t
want the police to land at my door.”
On a nearby phone, another caller says she
is being threatened by the family of a man she reported to the police for
harassing her. And on another line, a mother says she is rushing her teenage
daughter to the hospital after she was assaulted by a group of men.
The busy New Delhi help line was set up by
the city government after a fatal gang rape six months ago set off nationwide
protests against sexual assaults on women and prompted complaints that
calls to an existing police hotline in New Delhi often went unanswered or were
met with indifference.
The new 181 help line has received more
than 138,000 calls since it was launched at the end of December — stark
evidence, its staff says, of a
newfound courage among Indian women to report crimes that they may have
suffered silently just months ago.
Women call to say they are being stalked
and molested on the streets, raped, harassed by phone and Facebook, beaten by
their husbands or the victims of acid attacks by spurned lovers. They call from
crowded shopping plazas, from public transport buses, while walking home late
in the evenings, and from their own homes.
In this traditional society where families
worry that reporting a rape could make a woman the subject of ridicule and
scorn, experts say many sexual assaults go unreported. But something does
appear to be changing.
In the first three months of this year, 359
cases of rape were reported
in the capital, more than double the number reported in the same period
last year.
“Don’t cry, little one; just give us the
man’s address,” Geeta Pandey, the help-line supervisor, told the caller, who
worried that her attacker had made a video recording of the incident with his
cellphone and might make it public. “We will get the police to go to his house
and confiscate his cellphone. Meanwhile, try to talk to your mother about
this.”
The new help line, usually staffed by five
women, occupies a windowless corner room in the office of city’s 75-year-old
chief minister, Sheila Dikshit, New Delhi’s top elected official since 1998,
and it derives some of its influence because it was her idea. But it has no
power over the police department, which, under New Delhi’s complex maze of
authorities and jurisdictions, reports to the national government rather than
Dikshit’s.
Adding to the frustration of those working
to improve women’s safety in New Delhi is the fact that the city police deploys
at least two-thirds of its force to protecting
politicians and bureaucrats, rather than dealing with ordinary crimes.
“A help line can be truly effective only if
the police’s attitude changes," said Kavita Krishnan, a leading anti-rape
campaigner who mobilized students during the December demonstrations. “It is
still an uphill task just to be heard by the police and get a complaint
registered.”
‘Speak up’
But the unprecedented uproar against rape
in December and a subsequent anti-rape law that criminalized offenses such as
stalking, voyeurism and acid attacks — and prescribes the death penalty for
fatal rapes — has increased the confidence among women to speak out more
freely.
“It is as though a lid has been lifted,”
said Anita Daniel, 37, who worked in an insurance company before joining the
help-line staff. “Unlike my generation, the new generation’s resolve to speak
out will force the authorities to change,” she said.
“It is very satisfying to work here because
I can see the change happening right in front of me,” she added. “Every day,
with every call.”
The city police department is also stepping
up its efforts. In early June, it began running an advertising campaign aimed
at women with the tagline: “Speak up. Leave the rest to us.”
But coordination between the police and the
new help line remains difficult.
“Where are you standing right now? Go to a
crowded area, maybe a bus stand, and wait,” Munira Rizwan, a help-line
attendant, told a caller who said she was being followed by three men making
lewd comments. “Do not panic, we will send a police vehicle to you
immediately.”
“Come on, pick up the phone,” Pandey
muttered in frustration after she dialed the police.
Three months ago, a caller dialed 181 from
her cellphone to say she was surrounded by a small group of men threatening to
attack her, recalled Khadijah Faruqui, the head of the help line. The phone
line was live. The help-line staff could hear the men, but they could not get
the police to track the caller’s location in time. The caller was found raped
and murdered the following day, Faruqui said.
Faruqui has now asked the government and
the telephone companies to provide a location tracker. Software upgrades are
also underway to cut down time in answering calls and improve coordination with
the police. Faruqui wants to train the city’s hospitals and women’s legal
services to respond quicker when her help line forwards a complaint.
Calls from children
Some callers seek advice on marrying lovers
whom their parents do not approve of. Others call when their money and cellphone
are stolen in a bus or Metro. Perhaps the most disturbing calls are those made
by girls, Faruqui said.
“Sometimes young girls call us in the dead
of the night, whisper into the phone that an older man is abusing them,” said
Faruqui, adding that about 20 percent of the total calls come from children.
“The December gang rape was not an isolated
incident,” Daniel said, as she handed off to the next shift. “Terrible things
are taking place all the time.”
© The Washington
Post Company
