Cyberbullying! It exists around us and is suffocating. Here’s how you can tackle it

Cyberbullying- a term most of us, who are enlisted in various social platforms are acquainted with. Trolls somehow find a way to peek into our lives and create a disturbing atmosphere. Uploading a picture and getting notified by comments of abuses are not new. Recently we have seen a lot of men putting up videos normalising makeup on men. That deserves appreciation but what is interesting is to watch some of the comments on those videos.

“Chakka”, “Churiyaan pehen le” and what not. A girl put up a picture in a skirt and receives an abuse of “Kapde hi kyun peheni hai”. Ridiculous yet that’s the story of so many people. These trolls are nameless. They are masked and they hide behind fake usernames. All they do is go around moral policing people that are uncalled for. We can easily find people in our surroundings who have faced such experiences of bullying.

While sharing her experience of cyberbullying, a student from Gurucharan College, Silchar and an emerging entrepreneur says, “That single incident had affected my mental health to such an extent that I could not sleep, study, eat properly or focus on anything at all for a week.”

Delving more into her story, it has been found out that she was trolled massively because of calling out some misogynistic people openly. She had been repeatedly called out ‘didi’ and slut-shamed. She was threatened and trolled on social media. On questions of whether she fought back, she replied, “I did initially. But then I realised I don’t have that background in Facebook where people will come to support me. Not even women because most of them have internalised misogyny. And calling guys out somehow hurts their feelings too.”

This isn’t the only story. There are many such. But there is one thing that we need to realise and that is it is important to fight back these bullies. Indian legal system allows people to lodge complaints in case of cyberbullying. There is an option to lodge a complaint online on the site https://cybercrime.gov.in/ as provided by a lawyer. The cybercrime complaints can be registered with the cyber crime cell. Lawyer Pushpamrita Ray who was an advocate in the Delhi High Court before the 2020 pandemic and currently working as a law editor in Law Times Journal enlightens us, “In case the victim does not have access to any of the cybercrime cells, he or she can lodge the FIR at the local police station under Section 154 of Code of Criminal Procedure.”

Also, there are times when the police officer refuses to file the complaint of the victim. In those cases, the victim can make the written complaint to the Judicial Magistrate of his/her district who in turn can direct the police officer to commence the investigation. The documents required for filing an FIR of a cybercrime depend upon the type of cybercrime committed against the victim. Below are jotted down the relevant sections as mentioned by Pushpamrita:

1. Criminal intimidation by anonymous communication- 507 IPC
2. Violation of privacy- 66E IT Act
3.Publishing or transmitting obscene material in electronic form- 67 IT Act
4.Publishing or transmitting of material containing sexually explicit act, etc. in electronic form- 67A IT Act
5.Word, gesture or act intentionally done to insult the modesty of a woman- 509 IPC
6.Defamatory messages- 499 IPC
7.Stalking- 354D IPC

But these arrangements can be of help to catch the cyber predators only when the bullied decides to raise up voice. Many people overlook cyberbullying but it needs to be understood that this is a crime and anyone performing it has to be punished. There is an interesting insight that has been able to gather from Sayan Biswas who has been working as a journalist for a long now. It was the year 2009 when Sayan had first written a feature on Facebook in a local daily. At that point in time, the internet wasn’t the heartthrob of the generation and many probably couldn’t understand the article. But what he wrote mainly contained FAD or more precisely Facebook Addiction Disorder. Biswas says, “Who knew one day this addiction would change the entire scenario! Social media allows people to cross all boundaries. Someone who speaks slowly in life, who cannot talk making eye contact may turn out to be an extrovert in cyberspace. It has its pros and cons, of course.”

He feels that cyberbullying is an expression of distorted frustration.”For example, someone who is unemployed and has a disturbing mentality can be seen abusing whenever an employed has been marked with the slightest mistakes or no mistakes in many cases.” Cyberbullying reflects the side of our society which doesn’t move a step back in abusing to satisfy its ego and frustration. Religious and political bullying is quite common in our place. In his career as a journalist, Biswas says he has almost covered 20 such cases that have been dragged to FIR.

Many such cases are stopped before lodging an FIR. While talking about the issue, Sayan shares a personal experience of cyberbullying, “I was once trolled for covering rockstar Rupam Islam’s show. There were days filled with notifications of abuses and trolls. They even threatened to harm physically. Initially, I stayed quiet but the bullying didn’t stop. So I had to seek help from the police and eventually trollers had to delete their comments.”

According to him, most of the trollers were people whom he knew. These people used to respect him and he was stunned to see them being such violent with words in cyberspace.

All these experiences direct to one thread and that is the internet world is a space where some people lose their basic conduct and end up creating a ruckus in the lives of others. But this sort of bullying can be stopped if adequate action is taken at the right time. Ignoring a bully will only enhance his courage and make him do the same with someone else.