CYBER CRIME AGAINST WOMEN BY DEBARATI HALDER
Very recently I came across the news of a victim of domestic
violence who had been badly physically abused. All attempts to hide the bruises
in her face were failed. She was in pain for several days before she could
actually gather herself up to join the daily chores of life by her sheer will
power. When some of us, her well wishers advised her to report the matter to
the police immediately, she retreated. Her sole concern was to protect the
family. The case seems similar to many of the domestic violence cases in India
as well as in many parts of south Asia where the victim refuses to see the
police in fear of losing the faith in her ‘dear ones’. The story is no
different for on line abuses. Many women are constantly abused on-line by their
own family members, especially doubtful husbands, or someone in whom they once
had deep trust, like the ex boyfriends or the ex husbands. In the digital space, it is extremely easy to
spoil the image of the woman. Show her actual picture with dirty tag-line,
morph her picture to affix her face on nude bodies, show the pictures of vagina
and emboss her name on it, rape her virtually by affixing human hands on the
picture of her body parts, especially breasts and lower abdomen and allure
others to do the same....... these are some of the examples of abusing the
image of a woman which had been discussed by many feminist researchers in their
write ups including me in my paper titled “Examining the scope of Indecent Representation
of Women (Prevention) Act, 1986 in the light of cyber victimisation of women in
India (See Halder Debarati, Examining the Scope of Indecent Representation of Women (Prevention) Act, 1986 in the Light of CyberVictimization of Women in India (May 25, 2013). National Law School Journal,Vol. 11, 2013, pp. 188-218 . Available at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=2270061). But
no wonder, majority of the victims feel extremely embarrassed to visit the
police. Why? The case of this particular victim of domestic abuse made me
realise the truth again; the woman has to live in the society where her relatives
including her father, brother or even husband or even her women folk are also
staying. They may never like to be tagged as the relative of a victim of
on-line abuse, especially when many still believe that on-line abuses such as
these mostly occur due to the victim’s own (mis)deeds. Many victims retreat from reporting the crime in fear for loss of job and loss of reputation not for
them, but for the family members including the husband in case he is the abuser
himself. Some even fear for loss of reputation of the girls in the family in
the marriage market. In some cases, the fear is not baseless especially when
the police starts tracing the crime and haunts the offices or workplaces of the
accused, who may be directly related to the victim or her family. Also, the
police have almost set a trend to tag such crimes as either pornographic
crimes, or obscene or sexually harassing crimes... all of which may bring shame to the victim when she is asked
about it in the typical questioning pattern set for physical crimes falling
under the broad title of sexual crimes. Thanks to the confused laws, less
interest of legal drafts men ,the police authorities and the criminal justice
machinery in reviewing recent academic researches on the new developments
of international as well as national
laws, the young and enthusiastic police
officers (who are rare in number) never get any chance to book the
offences as per their own judgements and the crimes continue to add to the
categories of traditionally laid down definitions, giving less chances to
examine their true characters. But
unlike the physical cases of image destroying of the victim by hitting her and
bruising her face, cutting her skin and flesh and permanently damaging her
looks, where the accused could be arrested or the victim could be separated
from the accused, in cases of on-line crimes of image destruction, the accused
may remain hidden or may carry on further damages while the police carry on
further investigation. This is extremely frustrating for the victim. Then comes
the juggling of the jurisdiction in cases where the accused reside outside the
jurisdiction of the local police. While the Criminal Procedure Code clearly
empowers the police to carry on the investigation in such cases, red tapism
never leaves. A married woman never wants to lose her time in such tangle
especially when she has to look after her children, her job and her family.
Resultant, either she herself leaves the battle ground with deep frustration
which may even lead her to commit suicide, or may take up some illegal ways to
remove the image quickly. The actual image destroyer enjoys his misdeeds with
no repent.
But time has come when women, especially married women must
take time to save their own physical images rather than saving the image
destroyer. Let us hope that the courageous women may face the situation more
bravely to save themselves.
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. (2013), “Protect your image, not the image destroyer”, 3rd September,2013,
published in http://debaraticyberspace.blogspot.com/
