Desperate Indian men plays ‘phone Romeo’ by calling up random numbers
Meanwhile, this boom of mobile phones is getting misused in many ways including building up relations with strangers. Especially the case with lonely Indian men who are desperate to find girlfriends are in the habit of calling random phone numbers. They do it with the hope of setting up a relationship with a possible future wife. The ‘phone Romeos’ have become a scourge in India as well as in Bangladesh.
Julia Qermezi Huang, an anthologist at the London School of Economics, said: ‘It’s a new thing. It’s covert, it’s risky, it’s exploring with that outside world which they don’t have much access to.’
The Uttar Pradesh Police have set up a special call centre in the city of Lucknow to handle complaints from victims of such phone Romeos.
Reportedly, a gang in Uttar Pradesh had even started selling women’s phone numbers to men, with varying prices depending on how they look. The numbers of beautiful girls were sold for 500 rupees each while the number of an ‘ordinary looking girl’ is sold for just Rs 50.
The chat-up lines used by the men vary from the unnatural questions like ‘Can I recharge your mobile?’ to the dramatic way like ‘I am talking to you, madam, but my body is shivering’ and the much creepy ‘I want to do the illegal things with you’ and so on. Sometimes they call and say “I love you”. Sometimes they call and say “I want to talk to Arya” and I would say “I am not Arya” and they would say “OK, can I talk to you?”, the talks of the phone Romeos goes likewise.
