MUMBAI: A film actor and self-defence trainer has lodged a complaint of having faced sexual harassment from a WhatsApp video caller.
The complaint said the incident occurred on Friday.
She said she had been similarly harassed last year but the police had taken over two months to track down the suspect. She said she was still in the dark about the status of that case and hoped things would be different now.
The 32-year-old actor said she frequently received WhatsApp calls from unknown numbers but did not always answer them. On Friday, she twice declined a video call from a number with a UK country code. The third time she answered accidentally. On understanding that the person on the other end was masturbating, she immediately covered her phone camera so he would not see her. She then took a few screenshots as evidence.
Soon, the man started to text her and addressed her by her name. She began to tweet his messages and video screenshots, tagging Mumbai Police. She noticed that the place where he was calling her from appeared to be upscale.
“The culprit must have sensed that he was in for trouble and started apologising,” she said. “He said he was a 20-year-old student and had made a mistake. He also claimed the video call and messages were meant for a friend who shared the same name as me.”
She lodged an FIR at the Versova police station under provisions of the IPC and IT Act. The man kept texting until midnight. Even at the police station, she received an obscene video clip of him and another woman together.
Senior police officials said they were tracking the international number and had not made any arrests yet.
In August last year, the actor was harassed with WhatsApp calls from as many as eight different numbers.
“While seated with friends once, I decided to get the call filmed and take the video to the cops,” she said. “The man called about 11.15 pm and was masturbating over video. While I covered my phone camera, a friend of mine filmed him in the act. We called the cops but they forbade us from coming to the police station as it was late and offered to send an officer over.”
No one came and the actor ended up going to the Versova police station at 2am.
“After the FIR, I would call up the investigating officer, but he made strange excuses,” she said. “Two months later, when there was no breakthrough, I took to Facebook to narrate the incident. It appeared to have reached higher-ups in the police and one of them reached out to me. Within three days, the culprit was nabbed from north India.”
(The victim's identity has not been revealed to protect her privacy as per Supreme court directives on cases related to sexual assault)