Ahmedabad police reveals data on cyber bullying, mainly women affected

  • | Saturday | 31st July, 2021

It is an initiative of the cybercrime cell of Gujarat Police, which specifically deals with various kinds of online crimes. Barring online bullying and harassment, the cell also deals with financial crimes and identity theft. The helpline number is 100.

Ahmedabad police revealed that over the past one year starting  from January 2020 till date, around 5,000 people were subjected to cyberbullying, according to a data.

From January 2020 to July 2021, Over 4,985 complaints have been made by the victims, mostly women. The victims took to various social media platforms to lodge their complaints to the Anti Cyber-Bullying Unit of Gujarat Police, said the officials of Ahmedabad Cyber Crime Cell, which heads the ‘Cyber Aashvast project’. 

The Cyber Aashvast project was inaugurated by Union Home Minister Amit Shah in December 2019. It is an initiative of the cybercrime cell of Gujarat Police, which specifically deals with various kinds of online crimes. Barring online bullying and harassment, the cell also deals with financial crimes and identity theft. The helpline number is 100.

According to the officials, apart from stalking and bullying, the complaints also included cases of sexual harassment, impersonation, morphing of pictures of the victims followed by lewd activities made against them, and in most cases, the complainants were women.

Except for a few cases, among the 5,000 cases received by the anti-cyberbullying unit, the victims were mostly young girls and women. “The complainants were not just from Ahmedabad but all across Gujarat,” said Amit Vasava, deputy commissioner of police, Ahmedabad Cyber Crime Cell. He further added, that quite a lot of complaints made by the victims were that of stalking or inappropriate comments made on social media platforms.

According to Vasava, in the aforesaid cases, the anti-cyberbullying unit mainly worked in two ways. “First of all in case of impersonation or a fake account on social media, the particular account was deleted, and then the concerned police station was informed to take criminal action against the accused.” 

In several instances, the offenders` crime did not fall under the scope of the Information Technology Amendment Act, thus, it could not be counted as a criminal act. In such a case the unit took considerable action by either disabling or deleting the account of the accused. Following this, the unit arranged for proper counselling of the victims, reported The Indian Express.

“In most of the cases of bullying or stalking, we see that the accused is known to the victim and his advances have been refused in the past,” said Vasava.

Of nearly 5,000 complaints that have been registered, a few of them were made by the students of a private university. As per the complainants, they were sexually harassed by an unidentified person, who got into their online Zoom class without permission and made obscene comments and committed lewd activities. The accused were traced down over a year later. According to police, the prime accused had fled to Canada while his accomplice has been arrested. The arrested person is a student of the same private university who knew the victims, said police.

In another development, a 25-year-old man was taken into custody by the Anti Cyber Bullying Unit in Ahmedabad. According to officials, the accused mentally tortured several women and demanded their intimate pictures on WhatsApp on the pretext of providing them with free inner-wears. 

In another case, a man was allegedly found to have created several fake IDs on various social media platforms. The IDs were of women students of medical colleges in Ahmedabad. The accused was arrested from Modasa in Aravalli. “The accused had committed the act after his unsolicited advances were rejected by one of his victims in the past,” said police.

Following the incidents, the Anti-Cyber-Bullying Unit started counselling sessions for the women victims, who fell prey to cyberbullying. According to police, the unit has a total of four trained women officers from the National Institute of Mental Health and Neuroscience in Bengaluru. “Every time, a woman approaches the anti-cyberbullying unit, the women officers counsel them and together we seek progress ahead,” said Vasava, adding that in several cases of cyberbullying, the women victims fall into depression.

 


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