Stalked? Just call up the police

If someone is stalking you, don’t get scared. All you need to do is call the new anti-stalking helpline of Delhi Police. The police will take care of the “stalker” and you need not even register a case.

If someone is stalking you, don’t get scared.

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All you need to do is call the new anti-stalking helpline of Delhi Police. The police will take care of the “stalker” and you need not even register a case.

The helpline — 1096 and 27894455 — is especially for women harassed by stalkers.

“Most of the time, women hesitate to walk into a police station and lodge a complaint. With this helpline, they just need to make a call and the rest will be taken care of by the police,” said Rajan Bhagat, spokesman, Delhi Police.

“This is to encourage women from reporting such matters so that the accused do not go scot-free,” he said.

For now, the Crime branch of Delhi Police will take care of the anti-stalking cell, but

later on every police station will have such units.

The Delhi Police had last year launched an anti-obscene call helpline for harassed women.

“When we were dealing with such calls, we came across a number of calls where women complained that someone was following or stalking them. Keeping in mind such complaints, we have opened this help line,” said the officer.

Police said the women in distress can even SMS to 9911135446, e-mail to acp-sit-dl@nic.in or fax at 27292523.

“We have an anti-obscene call cell. We are satisfied with its functioning. So we are now planning a new initiative to help women, which is an anti-stalkers helpline,” said Y.S. Dadwal, police commissioner.

Police said during their interaction with various college representatives and students, stalking was found to be a common problem.

“During our various meeting and interactions college students were specially found to be suffering from this problem. This will benefit them a lot,” said the officer.

A total of 14,061 calls were made to the anti-obscene call cell till March this year since its inception a year ago.

All the calls would be

diverted to the respective police station. “It would be the duty of every station house office to ensure that prompt and timely action is taken on these complaints,” said the officer.