Blogger faces vicious cyberbullying by SRK fans

When 24-year-old Bengaluru-based blogger, Agratha Dinakaran pointed out in a blog post that actor Shah Rukh Khan had plagiarised a speech from author JK Rowling's 2008 address at Harvard, little did she know that she was inviting a vicious backlash from Khan's fans and would be subjected to such severe cyber bullying that she'd feel driven to the point of nervous breakdown.

In a recent blog post, Dinakaran writes, "..within an hour of that post being out there, I lost count of how many messages were actually coming my way that attacked me for not just being a woman, but on my looks, my age, my other blog posts, my education, my body type, my skin tone, and the quintessential accuse of 'wanting my 15 minutes of fame'..."

The 24-year-old blogger reported the abusive tweets. However, realising that the media was also scrutinizing the backlash, many of those who posted abusive tweets deleted them to destroy any evidence. The bullying wasn't limited to tweets though. A fake email account was created on her name and inappropriate emails were sent out from that account.

Dinakaran confess that she had never been subjected to hate in such a heinous manner and all the abuses and personal attack made her extremely paranoid. "Sure, you might think they were empty threats, and I really had nothing to worry about. But did you forget about the episode where the two girls got arrested over an innocent Facebook status? I was paranoid," writes Dinakaran in her blog post.

"I couldn't sleep, I couldn't eat. I didn't leave my house for a good ten days, I'm not even kidding you. My face was everywhere, and it only took one crazy person to act in a deranged manner to do something if I was easily recognizable in public. I wouldn't rest until my family was back home in the evenings. I was checking up with my friends (whose pictures with me were on Facebook) whether they were alright. I asked friends who were rallying with me on social media channels to stop doing so, in case they became victims of this callousness," she writes.

Dinakaran also says that she is not a SRK hater and the intention of her blog post wasn't to malign him, but to merely point out similarities. It's worth keeping in mind that the negativity of social media drove Shah Rukh Khan to delete his Twitter account at one point. "Sad, i read so much judgements, jingoism, religious intolerance on the net & i use to think this platform wl change narrowmindedness, but no!" Khan had written just before deleting his twitter account.

"Bullying's latest avatar is cyberbullying." Dinakaran points out on her blog. "It's mind numbingly easy to form groups and target people on the internet and bully them mercilessly. It's a collective effort, yes, effort, and that means actual work that these bullies put in to intentionally hurt the victims. This includes anything and everything from spamming the user's walls, creating fake email ID's, harassing the user online, gathering information about them and try to use it against them." she adds.

In India, cyber bullying gets the necessary go-ahead from the absence of laws attuned to such cases. Most cases of online abuse are dealt by clubbing Section 66A with the Prohibition of Ragging Act (Section 509 of IPC), which is meant to tackle sexual harassment. Except for Section 66A of the IT Act, according to which a person can be booked for sending false, offensive messages through communication services, there is no strong law to tackle cases of online abuse.

Updated Date: Oct 25, 2013 17:24 PM