Not Just On Street, Women Are Not Safe On Mobile: Truecaller Data Suggest 1 Out of 3 Women In India Receives Sexual Or Inappropriate Calls

While individuals around the world have just celebrated womankind on the occasion of International Women’s Day on March 8, India came across a sad data. A statistic that revealed that 1 out of 3 women in India receives sexual or inappropriate calls or text messages. After passing indecent comments in public spaces and streets, stalkers find it very difficult to leave women alone on their cellphones. A report titled ‘Understanding the Impact of Harassment & Spam Calls on Women,’ published by the popular application Truecaller studied into the data of harassing calls made to women and came up with the steps they can take to prevent them and encourages women to ‘Call It Out.’

Almost all of us have been stalked by strangers or came across obscene remarks. The perpetrators hang around in the neighbourhood, outside offices, schools and colleges. And many of times these dirty minds are not satisfied and hence they opt technology—with the intention to harass or offend a caller.

The survey highlights that:

1. 1 out of 3 (36 percent) women in India is receives sexual and inappropriate calls or SMS.

2. Of those, 78 percent of women claimed to receive harassment calls with inappropriate sexual content least once in a week.

3. 82 percent receive unsolicited videos and pictures with inappropriate sexual content least once in a week.

4. 50 percent of these calls and texts were anonymous, 11 percent were made by stalkers and 3 percent were from people known to them.

5. Majorly, 90 percent of the respondents from Rajasthan’s capital Jaipur has the highest instances of such harassing calls on a weekly basis.

5. 7 percent of them named and shamed the spammer on social media.

6. While only 10 percent of all women filed a complaint to the police.

It further reveals that 90 percent of women does not file a complaint due to fear, embarrassment and lack of confidence. According to the Truecaller’s Insights 2017 report, India is plagued by the highest number of spam calls in the world. The survey was conducted from January 20 to February 22, 2018 among 2,004 women aged 15 to 35 years across 15 cities in India.

Making threatening calls to someone is a criminal offense in our country and the Indian Penal Code (IPC) deals with this offense effectively through various sections. If any person follows a woman and tries to contact with her in order to foster personal interaction despite the woman’s disinclination, then he is committing stalking. Also, if a person monitors the use by a woman of the internet, email or any other form of electronic communication, he commits the offence of stalking. Whoever commits the offence shall be punished for an imprisonment up to three years on first conviction and on a second or subsequent conviction the imprisonment could extend up to five years. In each case, the offender shall also be liable to pay the fine.

Hope this data, will help us in understanding the plight of women in India and more strict and rigorous punishments will be introduced so that the offenders will not dare to misuse the technology.

(The above story first appeared on LatestLY on Mar 09, 2018 07:52 PM IST. For more news and updates on politics, world, sports, entertainment and lifestyle, log on to our website latestly.com).