Online Women Abuse Is On The Rise

More cases of jittery boyfriends and stalkers making lives miserable for women by posting private moments in the cyberspace are coming to the fore, but no hard solution is in sight so far.

- Sanjib Sinha

Mallika ( name changed) was one of my friends. She was known to be a ‘timid girl’, who spoke softly and judiciously chose her words. Probably for her introversion, she was very reticent about what had been done to her. The incident came to light much later. It was too late but on insistence from her well-wishers, she finally gathered up courage and complained against the whole incident to police. In the meantime, her boyfriend had been sharing her ‘private pictures’ widely but her initiative finally ended him up in jail. Mallika was devastated by the betrayal. The treachery came from somebody whom she had loved and shared her private moments with. And our society’s, anachronistic male ego had made it worse stamping her as a ‘bad girl’. Mallika had to sell her ancestral property in Kolkata and leave for other state. She even tried to end her life. But could that have ended this vicious cycle of malice?

Mallika is just one example how women become victim of malicious intent. Internet now has become a new ground for violations of women’s rights. Malicious ex-lovers and jittery boyfriends, after breaking up with their partners, upload their personal pictures . Blackmailing these women has fast become an obnoxious trend. Only a few women muster courage to go to police and file complaint against the troublemakers, who in most of the cases succeed in causing enough damage to the character of their target. They make private moments of a person public in no time via widely used social media and the ubiquitous porn hubs that dump anything coming from the users.