It is noon and about 50 Uttar Pradesh policemen are listening in rapt attention to a senior officer Navneet Sikera, at a conference room in the Lucknow offices of 1090, the much-hyped women's helpline started five years ago by the previous Akhilesh Yadav government. Mr Sikera has been tasked with training cops to be part of the state's anti-romeo squads, set up soon after the BJP government of Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath took over. The party, which won a landslide mandate in the assembly elections in March, had listed among its key promises setting up the squads to target men who harass women.
