Novel plan to curb eve-teasing

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Rajahmundry: In a bid to contain the increasing incidence of eve-teasing, harassment and atrocities against especially the woman students, the Rajahmundry urban police has come up with a novel plan, perhaps first of its kind in the state, to set up woman complaint boxes in women’s colleges and hostels to receive complaints on eve-teasers and trouble makers and initiate action against them depending upon the gravity of the case.
The women who are facing any kind of trouble from anybody including the members of the management, faculty, peer group and others can give a hint about the trouble maker written on a piece of paper and drop it in the box. The hint can be the registration number of the vehicle being used by the trouble maker or name or anything that helps the police to identify the culprit and the woman can mention about the problem in brief.
The police will track the person, nab him and initiate action as per the norms. The police is planning to set up as many as 100 boxes in educational institutions, hostels and other places where a large number of women gather.
The place for installation of boxes will also be decided as per the wish of the women in the college or hostel. The women are also being counselled on how to avail the plan to help them get rid of the eve-teasers. There is no need for the complainant to disclose their identity.
This provision is made keeping in mind that the women are not availing other options like toll free numbers 100, 1090 and 1091 (meant only for women) to alert the police about their problems fearing their identity will be disclosed.
The women also rarely call up the senior police officers on their mobile phones and send SMSs about their problem as they are unwilling to disclose their identity.
Every morning at about 11 am, Blue Colt cops collect complaints from all the boxes. Women police station circle inspector is made in-charge to supervise the implementation of the plan while additional SP and SP will monitor the overall plan. Urban SP T. Ravi Kumar Murthy inaugurated the first woman complaint box installed at Sri Chaitanya Women’s College at Prakash Nagar on Friday. He said, “We ap-peal to the women to make use of the plan and help the police to curb the menace.”