On the third-floor of the Delhi Police headquarters, women constables answer the 1091 women’s helpline number across five channels (desks) numbered 161, 162, 164, 165, and 166. Working in three shifts, 8 a.m. to 2 p.m., 2 p.m. to 8 p.m., and 8 p.m. to 8 a.m., the constables answer around 900-1,000 calls every day.
Sitting on her desk, a 24-year-old constable, a native of Rajasthan, answers a call. “Hello,” she says, the person on the other side disconnects. A similar call is attended by another constable, who is also 24 years old. “We get so many blank calls, it’s unbelievable,” she laughs.
The phone at channel 164 rings. “My mother is being harassed by a caller who calls from two numbers. We lodged a complaint in Paschim Vihar police station on December 12 but nothing has been done,” says the caller.
The officer takes her details and puts it in the system that will intimate PCR and the concerned district. On the other phone, a complainant says, “A boy is constantly calling and troubling me. I don’t want the police to come home. Just please call him and tell him to behave”.
Another call, another complainant. This time, from outer Delhi’s Aman Vihar. “My husband got married to another woman. I have two children,” she says. “Did you get to know today?” the officers asks. “Yes, what should I do?” The officers gives her the number of a women’s cell in the concerned district and puts the phone down.
900-1,000 calls a day
In another call, a woman says that her sister is 17-years-old and got married; she wants to live with her husband but the families don’t want the two to stay together at the moment.
The matter is being heard in the court as well, claims the caller from Sadar Bazar. Again, the constable shares the number of the women’s cell in the area.
In the next five hours, the five constables answer several hundred calls.
Blank calls
Most of the callers hang up the moment the officers answer, the rest are usually from women in distress looking for solutions.
A 45-year-old constable says that in her two years in the Police Control Room unit, she has answered many calls at 1091 where the caller just wanted to be heard and was not necessarily looking for police action.
“Some say they are being beaten up by their husbands or their families. When we ask if they want the police to reach their house, they say they just want to scare them,” she says, adding that in such cases, the details are taken and then a male officer calls the caller’s kin and gives them an earful.
Lending a patient ear
“ Unse unki problems sun lete hain, kuch auraton ke liye utna hi kaafi hota hai (We just listen to their problems and for some women, that’s enough),” says the officer.
Talking about the menace of blank calls, another constable sitting on a system they call ‘dispatcher’, which is essentially to maintain and mark complaints to the main women’s cell in Nanak Pura, takes out a register in which a log of calls is maintained.
“Out of the 1,122 calls answered on 1091 on Thursday, 898 were blank calls. It remains the same on other days. On an average, out of 900-1,000 calls received, at least 500-600 are blank calls,” she says.
According to officers, the numbers of women calling to report rape or molestation on 1091 are rare. The data provided by the Delhi Police says that of the total 554 crime related calls received on the helpline in 2017 (as of December 15), only 31 were of rape and two of molestation. The total number of calls made for women abuse stand at 42,883.
“Most calls come under domestic violence. Women also report misbehaviour by auto drivers just to scare them, which in fact, works,” says the 36-year-old officer.
Though the phones are constantly ringing, the number of calls received at 1091 is about 1% of the total received by the police every day. A senior police officer of the PCR unit claims that they receive roughly 1 lakh calls a day.
A 26-year-old officer says, “Most people still call 100. From a child to a senior citizen, everyone dials 100. Despite the women’s helpline being in place for years, awareness about it is still very low”.
As the conversation proceeds, a 29-year-old officer sitting on channel 166 receives a call from Janakpuri.
The caller says that her father-in-law is lodged in jail and her mother-in-law is having an affair, and her husband has a boyfriend.
“He spends most of his time with his boyfriend and I have to do both of their work at home. What should I do?” the constable pulls up the number of the area’s women’s cell but decides to lend a patient ear a bit longer.
