Bhubaneswar: There is an alarming rise in sexual harassment of women through SMS and mobile photography, the country's largest women's body today said and called for implementation of an effective mechanism to check this.

The All India Democratic Women's Association (AIDWA) passed a resolution during its four-day national conference, which ends in Bhubaneshwar, noting the new tool for harassment of women and called for formulation of a strategy to aid the distressed women.

'Harassment through SMS is a new phenomenon and is rising. We have received a number of complaints where senior managers sent lewd SMSs to their junior women colleagues. This amounts to sexual harassment of women at workplace,'' the AIDWA joint secretary, U Vasuki, told a press meet here today.

There were also instances where men had captured women's images through mobile phone cameras on the road and posted them on the pornographic or sex trade web sites.

''The police has not been able to deal with either mobile or cyber crimes very effectively. There needs to be a preventive mechanism for this," Kiran Moghe, another joint secretary, said.

The meet also called for a gender sensitive national media policy to check indecent and vulgar portrayal of women as sex objects in audio visual and print media.