Latest Articles
Back
How serious can Online Abuse be?
How serious can Online Abuse be?
An abuse happens when someone’s act causes a harm or distress to another. The harm can be physically, sexually, psychologically and emotionally caused. Online Abuse is a criminal practise whereby a person abuses using internet, be it chat, posting messages through social network, email, chat rooms playing online games or any other online media to harass the victim. Even if one knows that they are being abused, it is unclear where the boundary falls between expressing a point of view and being abusive.
Forbes defines online harassment or cyber harassment as repeated online expression amounting to a “course of conduct” targeted at a particular person that causes the targeted individual substantial emotional distress and/or the fear of bodily harm.
The sort of behaviour that counts as online harassment or abuse includes trolling, trying to damage person’s reputation through social platform by making false comments, tricking other people into threatening a person, stealing a person’s identity, electronic sabotage, doxing, cyber stalking, encouraging other people to be abusive or violent towards group of people.
When subjected to online abuse, the victim should first report to the administrator of the website/platform/application. If not resolved, the victim can report to the local police station or cyber investigation cell.
India, having top ranks for having the highest number of Internet users, also ace the statistics of global harassment. A survey conducted by Feminism in India underscored that 50% of women in major cities of India have faced online abuse. The more striking fact is that instances of cyberstalking against men are on a surge. According to experts the ratio of cyberstalking faced by men and women is 50:50.
In India, the victim can file a case under:-
- In the Indian Penal Code, Section 354D, which was added by the Criminal Law (Amendment) Act 2013. This section describes the act of stalking
- Section 499 of the Indian Penal Code defines defamation. This can be used against the offender.
- Section 354A of IPC punishes offence of sexual harassment. Under this the convict can be punished for a term of imprisonment upto 3 years and/or fine.
- Section 354bof IPC criminalises the offence of Voyeurism. This section prescribes 3 years of imprisonment for the first conviction and 7 years of imprisonment on second conviction along with fine.
- Section 503 of IPC punishes criminal intimidation.
- Section 509 of IPC- if someone is constantly bugging you with derogatory verbal abuse because of your gender.
- Section 507 of IPC punishes criminal intimidation by an anonymous communication with a term which may extend to two years of imprisonment.
- Section 228a of IPC deals with vengeful posting of images or videos of rape victims. This is punishable with an imprisonment which may extend to two years and fine.
- Section 67A of the Information Technology Act, 2008 has culled out a special category called material containing a ‘sexually explicit act’.
As cyber crimes are a virtual offence it will be difficult to collect evidence. What one can do is not to delete the comment or image out of anger. Keep it as evidence. In today’s world, cyber crimes are very serious and more punishments than the above mentioned can be used according to the cases.
