Editorial
A laudable move
It needs bolstering and replication
The initiative to set up a call centre to receive complaints related to stalking and provide legal aid in case of need, couldn't have come a day later. For, chasing and pestering young girls have assumed a menacing proportion. So much so that victims have even been driven to committing suicide sending shock waves across society lately.
It has indeed become a deeply entrenched and pervasive social malady acquiring a certain electronic dimension, to top it all. Incidence of stalking through e-mail and mobile messaging has gone up alarmingly, much of which goes unreported just as the incidents of sexual harassment generally were veiled in a culture of silence for long. As a matter of fact, victims at the initial stages, for the most part, keep their agonies to themselves for fear of reprisal or feel socially inhibited to be sharing their problems. Whereas timely intervention could have alleviated their suffering, there being no tangible avenues for redress that has had to be ruled out. But now, Windmill info Tech Limited, a call centre operator and a local NGO, The Hunger Project have signed a deal opening a hotline to heed complaints and offer legal assistance respectively.
Since the High Court directives for law-making on the subject and the specific steps the judiciary had ordained in the interim for the various institutions, something tangible has been awaited in this direction. While society has woken up to the malaise in part also due to demonstrations by girls of schools and colleges, some concrete steps needed to be taken.
In this perspective, we welcome the move made by a call centre company to provide hotline connection to girls in torment and an NGO to arrange legal aid support for the victims. Our hope is that the police, intelligence agencies and the community should reinforce this initiative by saving the victim girls and their families from threats to their security and helping to prosecute the offenders punishing them in a deterrent fashion. Also, the move should be replicated by others.
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