Wrong number: Kolkata woman flooded with sex-drug calls

KOLKATA: A middle-aged homemaker has approached cops seeking help to deal with a slew of calls where people are asking her for medicines for enlargement of sexual organs. It turned out that the woman’s cellphone number bears a similarity with the number advertised over a popular home shopping network channel by a company that sells enhancement capsules and oils for sexual organs.
In the complaint registered over Kolkata Police’s Facebook page on Friday, the woman’s husband stated that she has received close to 40 calls per day from people asking her for medicines and even when she tells them it’s a wrong number, the men continue to call and pester her using obscene language. “This has been going on for the past three months. Initially, we had decided to ignore the calls. But over the past few weeks, the number of calls has increased manifold. My wife keeps blocking the numbers, but the callers use new numbers and continue to harass her. She has more blocked numbers in her phone than saved numbers,” said the woman’s husband.
The number advertised over the channel was XXXXX33344 while the woman’s number is XXXXX03344. Both feature the digits 9,2,3,0 and 4, with the woman having an extra ‘0’ and a ‘3’ less. The first five digits of both numbers are identical.
The woman has owned the number for over seven years and doesn’t want to change it. The husband did some research and found out the number and address of the company in Kolkata and called them, asking them to change their number. “The person with whom I spoke was offensive and refused to help. When I threatened to lodge a police complaint, he asked me to do whatever I wanted, adding that they would do nothing to help me,” he said.
The man, who works as a senior sales executive with a private firm and has to shuttle between Kolkata and Delhi for work, is extremely concerned about his family as his wife stays in a south Kolkata flat with their two minor daughters. “Some of the calls my wife receives range from lewd and obscene language to threats of someone coming to our house to abuse her. We are living in fear, especially as she stays alone for several days a month. Hence, I thought of registering a complaint with the police’s Facebook page,” the man said.
The police sent him a private message and had a detailed chat with the complainant and asked him to submit all the numbers and conversation details.