Food cart vendor held for stalking teacher after she spurns his proposal

Noida: A food cart vendor who was stalking a 23-year-old school teacher for nearly two weeks after she rejected his advances was arrested after the woman filed a complaint on the Women Power Line (1090) helpline on Monday.The woman told cops that she would occasionally visit the food stall that the accused, Ankush Rai, a resident of Dalelgarh village, ran outside the school in Kasna.According to the complainant, when Rai expressed his interest around 20 days ago, and she turned him down, he began following her home—tailing her bus and making lewd gestures toward her. The harassment continued for weeks before she called the helpline on April 6.The complaint was subsequently forwarded to Kasna police station, where cops verified the allegations and registered a case under BNS sections 78 (stalking) and 79 (acts intended to insult a woman’s modesty). Using surveillance and intelligence inputs, a police team traced and arrested Rai within 24 hours. He was produced before a court and sent to judicial custody.Police said the swift turnaround, from complaint to arrest within a day, was made possible by the helpline’s direct coordination with local police stations, which allowed verification and action to proceed without delay under the supervision of police commissioner Laxmi Singh and deputy commissioner (women safety) Anukriti Singh.

Officials said such cases often go unreported because women fear social stigma or doubt that action will follow. The 1090 helpline, they added, is designed to lower that threshold, offering a confidential first point of contact that routes complaints directly to enforcement.Noida has recorded several stalking cases this year. In Feb, two men were arrested for allegedly harassing a woman by making obscene gestures from their car near Sector 24.In Jan, a 25-year-old call centre employee was found dead under a parked car in Greater Noida’s Beta 1 after she was strangled by a vegetable vendor who had been stalking her for nearly a year. Police said the accused accosted the woman as she returned from a night shift on Sunday and killed her when she refused to speak to him, barely 200 metres from her home. The accused was later arrested.