Cop ‘victim shames’ minor facing harassment
: “Why do you post pictures on social media? What he has done with you, he will do it with others as well. You should delete your social media accounts in order to be safe.”
This, allegedly, was the response of a police officer in Rajasthan when a woman went to the police station to lodge a complaint against an unidentified youth who had threatened to upload on Facebook a morphed nude photo of her minor sister. The youth had sent the morphed photo to the minor as direct message (DM) on Instagram .
The woman has alleged that the police officer — circle inspector at Dhanmandi police station — blamed her Bohra community for “giving too much of freedom to their girls” and also lambasted her parents for letting the minor have a cellphone.
The incident of victim-shaming came to fore when the elder sister took to the social media and sought help from Union women and child development minister Maneka Gandhi and she responded.
As per the woman, her 17-yearold sister received the DM on her Instagram account from a person with username @aryan6687. A screenshot of the DM that the woman shared shows the user threatening to post the morphed photo on Facebook. The teenager immediately informed her family, who approached the local police station to lodge an FIR.
“My father and sister went to the Dhanmandi police station in Udaipur to lodge an FIR. The cops said such complaints were taken by the cyber cell. The Suraj Pole branch of the cyber cell lodged an FIR but said they only deal with ATM-related cyber crimes,” the woman said in a Facebook post.
The woman said that her father and sister went back to the Dhanmandi police station where they were asked to come back the next day (Sunday). On Sunday, the woman claimed, they were directed to Circle Inspector (CI) where her sister narrated the incident again to a lawyer.
“The lawyer, CI, and an officer decided to morally lecture my sister and father the officer said, ‘Aap Bohra logo ko parents se bhaut azadi mili hui hai isliye ap logo ke sath ye bahut hota hai.” (Bohras have given their children a lot of freedom and that is why it happens),” she claimed.
She claimed that the police officials told them to delete the social media accounts.
The woman took up the matter on the social media and sought help me from the WCD ministry with the hashtag #HelpMeWCD --- the hashtag was created by the ministry for people who want to report facing a crime. Maneka Gandhi responded and assured the woman of immediate action.
“My family was disappointed. Then I got a mail from the WCD ministry in our favour instructing all the concerned departments to do thorough investigation and to take strict action against the culprit,” the woman told HT. Meanwhile, SHO of Dhan Mandi police station, Rajesh Sharma, denied the allegations levelled against him by the woman’s family. He said the matter was under consideration and the cyber team was probing the matter thoroughly.