KOLKATA: In an example of aggressive online harassment taking a scarier turn into real-world threats, a Class XII student from Kasba — who had written a Facebook post after the Pulwama attack on atrocities on Kashmiris in the Valley — was forced to delete her FB account and lodge a cybercrime complaint after unknown youths tracked her down to a city neighbour-hood she frequents.The traumatised girl had initially tried to ignore the hate messages flooding her inbox, only informing some of her friends of the vile abuses and rape threats she was receiving as her post went viral on the social networking site. “You should be raped. Didn’t they rape you?” read one of the messages, the girl forwarded to TOI. “We should send boys to your room,” read another post.However, she was alarmed when the online trolling took an ugly real-world turn on Monday.“I have a student in Bagha Jatin. Before I reach his house, I usually stop at a local stall for a cup of tea. The shop owner on Monday told me that a few youths had come looking for me and showed him photos from my Facebook account. They wanted to know about me. I got scared and deleted my Facebook account,” the girl said. Alarmed, she finally lodged a complaint with the cybercrime cell.Her post, written a few hours after the Pulwama attack, started getting hate messages soon after it went online. She was hardly surprised by the trolling amid reports of Kashmiris being threatened across the country, including a Kolkata doctor who had some men barge into his house and asking him to go back to Kashmir “I had anticipated some comments from those who refuse to get to the bottom of the issues, but wasn’t prepared for the abuse and frequency of the threats, which started to increase with each passing day. They called me a Pakistani and asked me to leave the country,” said the girl, who is part of an organization working to protect women from sexual harassment.“They tried to slut shame me and posted photographs from other sites on my facebook page,” the girl recounted. “Some of them picked up my photographs and made lewd comments on them. Surprisingly, none of them made those comments on the Facebook post, but sent their messages directly to my inbox. Perhaps they did not want to show others how vile their language can be,” she added.

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