SHILLONG: Women activists here have asked the state government and its Police Department to effectively implement the existing criminal laws to strictly deal with cases of harassment of women and girls over social media such as Facebook and WhatsApp.
The leaders of Thma U Rangli Juki (TUR) and Civil Society Women’s Organization (CSWO) raised concern over the matter after a woman was unnecessarily victimised recently in the social media.
A woman from Ri-Bhoi District of Meghalaya is one of the victims whose photographs with her husband was uploaded along with an explicit-sex video and circulated through WhatsApp and Facebook. The miscreants tried to insinuate that the particular woman was the female seen in the said video.
The couple, who had to go through difficult times for no fault of theirs, decided to seek justice by filing a first information report (FIR) with the Umiam Police Station on May 10 and urged the persons responsible behind the act be booked as per law of the land.
The woman told reporters that she came to know about her photographs being abused on social media when she got a call from a friend and immediately on May 10, she and her husband went and filed an FIR.
“I want police to take stern action and ensure this does not happen to others,” the woman added
The victim who broke down in tears also said that the incident had also created a big misunderstanding in which her husband’s relatives without knowing that everything was fake had threatened her for allegedly misusing the Clan of her husband on the Facebook.
The husband of the woman said that on searching, he found that the explicit video was in fact uploaded in Facebook last year and miscreants with malicious intentions took his wife’s photos and circulated the same through WhatsApp.
On the other hand, TUR leader Angela Rangad, who came out to support the couple, expressed concern over the fact that women were made to be soft target in the social media.
Rangad further stated that the Meghalaya State Women Commission should also pro-actively monitor some groups, who are in the habit of abusing women, in the social platforms like Facebook and others.
Rangad said that not only the people who are behind circulating such lies, but the ones who received and share should also be punished as per law.
Echoing in similar lines, CSWO chief Agnes Kharshiing, however, asked the police to take all the sharers of the video in order to nab the culprits behind the irresponsible act.