Tackling lewd Social Media Messages

Rana Ayyub recently shared her horrid experience over Twitter. A well-known journalist from New Delhi, Rana received lewd and harassing messages from a man on a well-known social networking site. Rana was quick to bring things into light by exposing the messages on her Twitter account. And surprisingly action was taken very quickly.

The man was immediately fired from his office in UAE after they came to know about the incident.

Rana Ayyub is not the only girl who receives such messages on a daily basis on a social media handle. Most of the women, assaulted online prefer to ignore such messages or choose to block the person messaging. Mostly people feel the best way to treat such perverts is blocking them.

However, what girl’s seem to miss out is that it is a type of cyber crime.

A lot of people have been applauding the brave and young Rana for taking immediate action. Some takeaways that Indian Women should have:

• Take screenshots of the lewd messages
• Expose the pervert/s in a tweet or a social media post.Make sure you tag someone who knows them or inform anyone who loves them
• Stay brave and needless to say, be ready for criticism and questions from everyone. Everyone has the right to ask/criticise.
• Take a stand and don’t change your statements every other minute.
• The police might get involved in case you file a FIR under cyber-crime.

In the case of Ayyub, the man, Balachandran Lal got sacked and even his visa was cancelled. Although Ayyub had received mixed responses from her followers, most people lauded her bravery and prompt act.

“I decided to name and shame this guy because enough is enough. Whenever I’ve reported men in the past, cops have said that nothing will come of it because they are anonymous. The company told me that he has been messaging abusive messages to many other women,” Ayyub said to Buzzfeed.

Do not agree when someone says that it is normal for girls to receive such messages online. If you think sending such nauseating messages is a crime, then take a note – ignoring them too is regarded the same.