Sexual abuse? Complaints galore on a portal

"I was going to my college at Dilsukhnagar. I got down from the bus and was walking forward... Suddenly a few men came from the front and two of them walked by my side close to me and one of them pinched my ..."

"I was shocked...I couldn't talk to anyone. I did not report it to the police as I could not see the face of the person who pinched me. There have been similar incidents in this area."

This is one of the entries from around 1,300 on www.safecity.in. The website was created a few days after the Delhi gang rape incident with an aim to improve reporting of sexual harassments against women. The website also offers an interactive map of the most unsafe cities in the country.

Women are subject to sexual assault every three minutes and statistics from National Crime Records Bureau say that a woman is raped every 20 minutes. These crimes are reported to the police and are registered officially. Thousands of incidents like the one at Dilsukhnagar are never registered and do not get into the crime records.

All that the website does is provide a platform for women who want to remain anonymous and are shy to report at a police station.

Founded by Surya Velamuri, Else Dsilva, Saloni Malhotra and Aditya, the website has created a "crowd-sourced" map of sexual harassment, covering safe and unsafe places across the nation.

Thanks to the anonymity the website offers, it is an instant hit with women. Anyone from anywhere in the world can report an incident of sexual abuse.

"As women in the group, we asked ourselves -- what is it that has troubled us in various ways all through these years? Our aim was to customise it to Indian behaviour. So we included categories like cat-calling, touching and groping, sexual invites, indecent exposure, etc", says Surya Velamuri.

Since its inception last year, safecity.in has received more than 1,348 reports of sexual abuse from across the nation with the national capital Delhi recording the maximum number of complaints with 1,080 and Hyderabad with 130 complaints stands second. The numbers are consistently growing.

Speaking about the map, Surya says, “The map will help women travelling to new places to know safe and unsafe locations.”

"The map can actually help the police and administration to nail the possible reasons that make a city or place unsafe and address them. Be it poor lighting, less patrolling or rogue elements," she adds.

What makes the website popular with women, is the anonymity they are offered.

"We realised that women in India are usually scared and [too] shy to report sexual abuse. They do not like their names and identities to be revealed, but here you can post as an anonymous user."

But that creates a problem of a different kind. As most women visitors to the site do not leave their names or contact details, it makes it difficult to verify the reports, says Surya.

Safecity has recently joined hands with Goa police and any user willing to make a formal complaint in the Goa region can disclose their identity to the police and get their case registered.

The group is working on more such tie-ups with police in other cities and towns. Success, however, is still a far cry.

In a country of 1.2 billion people, India has only 130 million Internet users and with limited Internet penetration in rural India, safecity.in has a long way to go before it can map every corner of the country.