Representational imageThiruvananthapuram: The rising tide of crime against women has not even spared women cops. The women's police stations and women’s cells in Kerala are being flooded with obscene phone calls, sources in the police said.
Pervert callers exclusively pick woman-only police teams and rely on the anonymity of public phones. Even IPS officers find themselves the target of such anti-social elements.
One of them is Jose. The Thiruvananthapuram native is serving sentence for a vulgar call he made to an IPS officer working in Thrissur district. He used to call up various woman-only police stations in Thiruvananthapuram and belt out obscenities. He faces about 15 cases in various police stations.
The man has been on his mischief from at least 2009 but he was put in jail only this year. He was working at a bakery in Ernakulam when he borrowed a migrant laborer's phone to call up the IPS officer. He has been accused of calling up another woman IPS officer and abusing her over phone.
Jose is so compulsive that he just can't stop. He has continued writing obscene letters to women cops from the prison. Whenever he is out, he would call up women cops. He makes it a point to get the numbers of all women in the police team that has filed a case against him.
He has been subjected to psychological examinations but was not diagnosed with any disorder.
Jose is not a freak case. There are quite a few perverts who find pleasure in abusing policewomen. Women cops in Thiruvananthapuram say they have a new tormentor in place of Jose. The man calls from another district but it is hard to locate him without a caller id. The policewomen have complained to their superior officer but the matter has not been taken seriously yet.
Cops in the state women cell and women cells in each of the districts say they receive many phone calls with vulgar tones.
"The depraved are everywhere. They call wherever they want to. Even we get such calls," an officer at the state-level women’s cell said. However, few of them are regulars like Jose.
Some of the calls are from accused persons who vent their ire on police officers. Even official phones receive obscene text messages. A man was arrested for sending a group SMS to all officers in the women's cell.
Vulgar phone calls continue nevertheless.
