Online abuse, offline battles

Those who decide to take on the trolls have to face a legal world that does not yet fully understand the problem. (Getty Images photo)

Women who are vocal about political and social issues often have to deal with online harassment, a lot of it sexual in nature. But getting cyber crime cells to chase a case is sometimes an even bigger ordeal.

The tweet came out of nowhere. “nw I want to rape aparna at her home. 2day. Please bring tight security at aparnas home ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha,” it read. The account, which bore an ambiguous name and no display picture, was almost immediately blocked and later suspended. That did not stop the user from hitting back from newer accounts, this time with more vicious and unprintable threats. Delhi-based leadership coach Aparna Jain decided she was not going to take these online threats silently. She locked her twitter account and filed a police complaint.

In the average female netizen’s life, harassment, sexual or otherwise, is common. Women who speak about it get gratuitous advice — ‘let it go’ or ‘just block the account’. Those who decide to take on the trolls have to face a legal world that does not yet fully understand the problem.

For Jain, filing the complaint itself was an ordeal. After her emails to the cyber cell bounced back, she approached a local police station.

“I had to wait two hours before my complaint could be registered. There was no clarity on what to do. Later when I went to the cyber cell with my complaint, they said there wasn’t much they could do since an FIR had been filed already. But they did take note of it after much hesitation,” says Jain, whose complaint has been filed under sections 506 and 509 of the IPC, which addresses criminal intimidation and insulting the “modesty of a woman”. Chennai writer and activist Meena Kandaswamy went to the police when she was viciously attacked online for her posts on a beef-eating festival in Osmania University, Hyderabad. She lodged a complaint with the city commissioner but and says that there were no follow up calls from the police and that no arrests have been made in the case so far.

According to the National Crime Records Bureau, in 2013, there were 1,203 cases registered for “obscene publications/transmission in electronic form”. Acting on these, 737 arrests were made. Of the total number of cybercrimes registered last year, 23.5% were registered under the IPC, the rest under the Information Technology Act.

Cyber crime policing is relatively new in India so there is still uncertainty regarding procedures. The government lists 23 cyber cells across the country now, mostly in big cities. Says Debarati Halder, who runs the Center for Cyber Victim Counseling (CCVC) in Tirunelveli: “Those in smaller towns do not have the option of walking into a cyber crime cell. The police there are not used to the internet and often do not understand the laws relating to it. So people tend to avoid filing a complaint.”

Each cyber cells works to a different set of rules and levels of awareness on cyber issues too is low among junior officers. Rakshit Tandon, advisor to the Gurgaon police cyber crime cell, acknowledges this. “Different states have different processes. For example, in some states, the cyber crime division registers a complaint followed by an investigation.

In case of anonymous accounts, when the person is identified, an FIR is filed with the local police who then prepare a chargesheet. Then some places have cyber crime police stations, which become a one-stop shop to resolve complaints,” he says. Cyber cells are expected to accept emailed complaints but users complain that these invariably bounce back.

Predictably, the profile of the woman in question often decides how the case is handled. Public figures have an easier time getting the wheels moving though they also attract a lot more unwanted attention for their views. Two years ago, Chennai-based singer Chinmayi Sripada was flooded with online abuse and rape threats. When the case went to the police, they acted with alacrity.

A year later two persons were arrested for the offense. The insults, it transpired, started after she refused to participate in a hashtag campaign against the arrest of Indian fishermen by the Sri Lankan navy.

Sripada’s mother T Padmhasini, then 62, had painstakingly collected online evidence for six months. “It was a hashtag that was abusive towards the government.
Chinmayi refused to participate but tweeted saying she wishes the fishermen make it back safely,” she says. “I even traced the identities of these people and spoke to them on the phone. They accused her of being casteist and even threatened her with an acid attack. I went to the police with over a hundred printouts and all the evidence.”

AIPWA secretary Kavita Krishnan too says she gets about ten such messages every day. The activist was threatened with rape in a public, live online chat, last year. Krishnan too filed a police complaint, only for the investigation to hit a dead end with the anonymous user being untraceable.

Last year, Twitter added a button to report abuse. This happened soon after a UKbased journalist received a barrage of abusive tweets for her campaign to feature Jane Austen’s picture on currency notes. On its support page, Twitter encourages users to block or report abusive accounts. Facebook support centre too says that the social networking giant removes “anything that doesn’t follow the Facebook Community Standards”. This includes rules against bullying, violence and threats, and hate speech among other offences.