CYBER CRIME AGAINST WOMEN BY DEBARATI HALDER
When the Bengali
cinema lovers just woke up from the first shock of the death of the legendary
actress Suchitra Sen, came the news of the death of Sunanda Pushkar Tharoor,
better known to many as the wife of Dr. Shashi Tharoor, the extremely noticeable
union minister of India. People were in awe of Suchitra Sen even when she was lying
in Keoratola crematorium ground waiting to be cremated by her daughter. The main
reason: she was an extremely personal lady and unlike many of her
contemporaries, she neither appeared in public for more than twenty something
years, nor did she encourage anyone to know more about her through the
electronic media. She was not present in either Facebook or Twitter and no one
knew how she looked like after she appeared in her last cinema. We, the
generation who grew up watching Big Bs
getting older looks and new actors like Shah Rukh Khan and his contemporaries
taking the stage from the older generation, hardly watched any Bengali cinema
during the late 80’s or 90’s until Rituporno Ghosh brought back the magic of
commercial Bengali cinema back to us in late 90’s and early 2000s. We, like our
parents and grandparents, wanted to see Suchitra Sen and be in touch with her,
but in vain. Internet and social media never appealed to her to get reconnected
with her fans. But when she died on 17th January,2013 Facebook and Twitter
were swept over by comments, condolences and pictures of her. I even came
across “Suchitra Sen hot” key words in Google even though the images showed her
two granddaughters who are also actors and not her in any such ‘hot scene’. Photographs
of her exhausted and distressed daughter and mourning granddaughters in the crematorium
were shared by many electronic news channels and these were hot favourite in
the net on the day until suddenly the private lady was eclipsed by another very
much public figure Sunanda.
I loved
watching Shashi and Sunanda’s photographs over the internet like million others.
They were very much ‘public’ and I was one of Shashi Tharoor’s 2,050,605 followers in Twitter. Occasionally I used to reTweet his very informative Tweets and like many
others I took deep interest in reading
the family drama involving his ‘hacked Twitter account’, his wife and a Pakistani
journalist( see http://www.hindustantimes.com/india-news/tharoor-makes-statement-about-marriage-after-wife-sunanda-s-twitter-outburst/article1-1173465.aspx)
. I like million others, took him to be a public icon who should be ‘followed’,
‘watched’, talked about and criticised for his views. I obviously was not
following Sunanda and I am sure, like me, there are many who started
scrutinising her tweets for the first time when Shashi Tharoor gave a joint statement
with her regarding their marriage and news channels started increasing their TRPs by
publicising this. Interestingly, it was not Shashi Tharoor’s tweets which drew
attention, it was Sunanda’s ones. Simultaneously, the Pakistani journalist
involved therein probably received millions
of visitors for her tweets within a few hours as well. Some of Sunanda’s tweets
and Pakistani journalist’s tweets did definitely provide a chain of blame game centring
‘a husband’ and two women’s
relationships with him. I instantly wondered how one can become so much public
about one’s assumptions regarding personal relations. This incidence is not an
example of bullying; I have seen many instances of death caused by Facebook
bullying which were public and the death was caused mainly by the emotional
stress the victim went through after realising what the audience (who are
watching the bullying communication) would think about him/her. But this is
definitely a very bold example of right to express oneself publicly and what
could be the consequence in real life. Many academic researches on online victimisation
have shown how a particular communication, seeing an unwanted image or even
constantly thinking of the issue take a toll on the health of the victim. This
may have played an important role in her ‘unnatural’ death along with other
factors as are now being revealed by the police, doctors and also by the media.
But the question is, does one really need to be this much public in the social media
in certain cases even if he/she is a public figure? Both Sunanda and the Pakistani journalist had
pulled in lots of issues in their respective tweets and indeed the diplomatic relation
of the two countries is also involved now. This is one brilliant example as how
an issue which should have been a private affair, can draw more than desired
attention because of the ‘public nature’ of
it. Some may say they are public figures and they should be transparent.
But is this much transparency wanted especially when it has resulted in a death?
Apart from personal Tweets, the investigation have also started analysing CCTV footage, personal text messages , emails
that have been exchanged within all three of them. But as the criminal
procedures and constitutional rights guarantee, some of such evidences would
never be published respecting the right to privacy of the people involved. The ‘public
Tweets’ may remain forever giving a sad example as how desire to remain in
public eyes through publicly expressing personal thoughts may create an
unwanted image which may never be broken and which can become chosen item for
trolls for jeopardizing the situation more.
India is
undergoing a tremendous change in legal procedural codes in respect to media
reports ( including reports, status updates or tweets by civil society members)
of the crimes, privacy of the victim as well as the accused with the case of
sexual harassment of law interns by judges. The transition may take our privacy
law understandings to new heights which may have positive as well as negative
implications. This case of Sunanda Tharoor may remotely add some contribution
to the ongoing transition if and when the prosecution starts throwing light on
the publicly expressed private comments in the social media and the ‘sharing’
of these by other fellow Tweet-handles. Nonetheless, this would remain an
example as where to draw a limit line of privacy in the social media when one
is very much public.
Please Note:
Do not violate copyright of this blog. If you would like to use informations
provided in this blog for your own assignment/writeup/project/blog/article,
please cite it as “Halder D. (2014), “Public
tweets, privacy and necessity to be private in public eyes “
19th January,2014, published in http://debaraticyberspace.blogspot.com/
