Women’s Phone Numbers on sale in UP at Rs 50, Govt sets up helpline 1090

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Across Uttar Pradesh, Mobile numbers of unsuspecting girls are being sold from recharge outlets for prices based on their looks. This disgraceful act came into the limelight after a 24-hour police help line, 1090 which has been set up by the Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav. He took this step when there were increasing complaints from women about unsolicited calls. There are about 6 lakh complaints that were registered with the helpline in the last four years, in which 90% are related to harassment of women on the phone.

Most of these men get the number from the recharge outlet where women go for recharge, and their mobile number are distributed from there. A majority of these men who decoy women mostly ask for friendship and try to build their relation. These numbers are sold or distributed to those who are willing to pay the amount and pay depends on considering how beautiful the women is and could be priced as much Rs. 500, that goes down till Rs. 50.

The major hand in setting up this helpline was from Navneit Sekera who is an inspector general of police who says that anonymity is the key for the latest scourge plaguing tens of thousands women. Most of the recharge shop owners help to buy SIM cards with fake Id’s that they have collected earlier. For a mobile recharge agent, all that it takes is just filling a form and depositing a security amount with the agency mediating between the individual and the mobile service operators across the state.

Mohammed from Shahjahanpur who ages 24 years confessed that his favorite recharge outlet is run by a duo of father and son wherein they would visit the store when the father is away. And then the number taken from the women are circulated among these friends groups. He also confessed that they sometimes send vulgar pictures over WhatsApp. People also reported that they mostly get abusive calls that cause nuisance and cause chaos in the family.

A PCO-cum-recharge outlet in Allahabad which is run by Manu Bhaiyya claims that not all of them do this, it happens mostly with new guys that entered into the business recently. Till now buying or selling women’s number has not put anyone behind bars but police will now go after the rechargers who enable the purchase of SIM cards with fake ID proofs. IG Sekera also mentioned that they had booked three recharge guys till now under Section 467 for dealing with false documents.

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