In July, when Maneka announced that the ministry will take up online abuse complaints and pass it to a team, she faced a heap of sexist abuse online herself. She also met with officials from Twitter and Facebook, and encouraged to email her with complaints. A hashtag, #IamTrolledHelp was also floated.
Four months since Union women and child development minister Maneka Gandhi announced that abusers on social media platform such as Facebook and Twitter will be taken to task, the team looking after these grievances has registered 40 complaints.
Registering complaints from several women initially, the complaints have been trickling down, a senior ministry official said. "In the beginning, we received several complaints weekly. Over the last few days, complaints have come down due to the ministry's efforts," said the official.
In July, when Maneka announced that the ministry will take up online abuse complaints and pass it to a team, she faced a heap of sexist abuse online herself. She also met with officials from Twitter and Facebook, and encouraged to email her with complaints. A hashtag, #IamTrolledHelp was also floated.
Her move, welcomed by many women, also led to severe abuse of the minister on various social media platforms, especially on Twitter and Facebook. A team within the ministry now looks at the complaints and forwards them to the police.
Complaints are also alternately processed by the National Commission of Women. Of the 14,445 complaints that the agency has registered so far in 2016 under 19 different categories, 226 complaints were of cyber crime. Of these, in May the NCW registered 37 complaints, which was the highest for any month this year.
In the Jan Sunwai, too, that is being currently held by the NCW, several complaints of cyber crime have come up.
For instance, one of the complaints is from a woman who was in a relationship with a married man. When her relationship turned sour, she broke up with the man, who then started harassing her by putting up several intimate pictures on twitter. "The woman went to the police, but they remained helpless since the man kept on changing his IP addresses and his phone numbers,"said NCW member Rekha Sharma. "We have now asked the woman to put up a fresh complaint, and have asked the police to follow it up by gathering proof."
In another such instance, a girl in a long distance relationship with a Indian boy living in London complained that after she broke off the relationship the boy could not take no for an answer and started posting intimate pictures on Facebook, and other social media platforms. The police blocked the Indian IP addresses, but since some of the addresses are UK-based, they remained helpless.
"We will now write to the Indian High Commission in the UK to ensure the abuse stops," said Sharma.
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