After the horrifying incident of rape and murder of a Dalit woman in Hathras, people have been demanding justice against the crime and are pressing for stricter rules to be set up for women-safety in Uttar Pradesh. In response to this, the Home Department of UP has proposed setting up a data analytics centre which would be a part of the Women Power Line 1090.

The Women Power Line 1090 was established on November 5, 2012, by the UP government in wake of women empowerment. It is a contact centre that is available 24×7 for women to report cases and register complaints of eve-teasing.

The recently proposed idea of setting up a data analytics centre is a part of the ‘safe city’ project of the government in which the data shall be stored and analyzed for identification of areas where crimes against women are more likely to occur.

In a statement issued recently, Awanish Kumar Awasthi, additional chief secretary of the home department, had said that the data, collected from different sources, would be analyzed to identify the areas where the women were harassed. The areas from where maximum cases are reported would be marked as hot spots. The district police and the anti-Romeo squads would be activated to check crime against women.

He also claimed that Women Power Line 1090’s cyber cell shall be strengthened by providing them with cyber forensic tools for faster case disposal and quick response.

In addition to this, the helpline number of Women Power Line 1090 has been merged with the UP-112 line of the police department. This has been done to ensure a quick response from the police for them to easily catch the offenders. Awasthi also said that an SMS alert would be sent to the police officer posted in the area and feedback about police action would be collected from the victim.

After the Yogi Adityanath government came into power in 2017, a new policy was introduced to form anti-Romeo squads in the state to monitor the eve-teasers and stalkers regularly. Although, many reports have revealed that such people in the name of protecting the women and couples against eve-teasers have been misusing their power and harassing them instead.

The author is a student member of the Amity Centre of Happiness.