BBC News Online: World: South Asia

Phone sex clampdown in India

The main supplier of domestic telephone services in India, MTNL, has announced it has closed down a number of telephone sex chatlines, after getting what it said were hundreds of complaints.

A spokesman said access to the lines of 21 Indian companies, many based around Bombay, had been withdrawn because they were brazenly offering sex talk, while masquerading as dial-a-friend chatlines.

Customers pay a premium rate for chatline services which, in India, range from astrology to legal and medical advice.

MTNL, which is state-controlled, says many of the complaints came from activists who support the governing Hindu nationalist party in India, the BJP.

From the newsroom of the BBC World Service