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Cyber crime against women
The traditional Indian culture holds women in a very high regards, the women are glorified by the Vedas as the mother, the creator, one who gives life and worship it as a ‘Devi’ or Goddess. The women occupied a vital role and as such her subjugation and mistreatment were looked upon as demeaning to not only the woman but towards the whole society. [1]
The cyber world in itself has a virtual reality in which anyone can hide or even falsify their identity, this gift of internet is used by the offenders to commit crime and
then hide under the cover of internet. Women are treated as inferiors from a very long time and the wrong doers often think they would not get penalise.This encourages the wrong doers more. Though crime against women is on a rise in all fields being a victim of cyber crime could be most traumatic experience for a woman. Especially in India where the society looks down upon the women, and the law doesn’t even properly recognise cyber crimes. Cyber crimes are those crimes which are done with the help of computers, laptops and technology.
Women particularly young girls who are inexperienced in cyber world, who are new to the internet and not knowing to internet vices, which are thus the most susceptible to falling into the bait of cyber criminals & bullies. For a women to be caught in a cyber crime on social media platform becomes very uncomfortable and inappropriate to handle.
There are some types of cyber crimes which women face :
Harassment through e-mails: Harassment via email, includes black mailing, threatening and constant sending of love letters in anonymous names or regular sending of embarrassing mails.
Section 67 A, 67 B of the IT act provide sexual harassment in respect of offences of publishing or transmitting of material containing sexually explicit act and child pornography in electronic form, in the cyber world abuse including extortion, threatening, bullying, and even cheating is mostly done by e-mailing.
Cyber stalking: Cyber Stalking basically is behavior wherein an individual willfully and repeatedly engages during a knowing course of harassing conduct directed at another person.
Which alarms ,torments or terrorises the person, fairly and seriously. This is one of the most talked about internet crimes in the modern world.
Cyber Stalking usually occurs with women or children who are stalked by men, adult predators or pedophiles respectively. Cyber stalkers target their victims and threaten them via websites, chat rooms, discussion forums, open publishing websites and email.
The motivation of stalkers could also be considered but four reasons,
(i) sexual harassment,
(ii) obsession for love,
(iii) revenge and hate,
(iv) ego and power trips[2]
Cyber defamation: Cyber defamation also called Cyber smearing are often understood as the intentional infringement of ‘another person’s right to his good name. Cyber Defamation occurs with the assistance of computers and the Internet. It is considered more of a menace owing to its expeditious nature.
Child pornography: Child sexually abusive material (CSAM) refers to material containing sexual image in any form, of a child who is abused or sexually exploited. Section 67 (B) of IT Act states that “it is punishable for publishing or transmitting of material depicting children in sexually explicit act, etc. in electronic form.
The DPS MMS scandal[3] is a very famous case of this where an MMS clip of a school girl in compromising situation was made and distributed amongst various internet networks.
Cyber bullying: A form of harassment or bullying inflicted through the use of electronic or communication devices such as computer, mobile phone, laptop, etc.
Cyber grooming: Cyber Grooming is when a person builds an online relationship with a young person and tricks or pressures him/ her into doing sexual act.
Chapter XI of the IT Act deals with the offences such as tampering with computer source documents.
Section 65 deals with hacking of computer system.
Section 66 deals with publishing of information which is obscene in electric form.
Section 67 deals with Access to protected system.
Section 70 deals with Breach of confidentiality and privacy.[4]
Unlike other crimes like Cyber Stalking, Cyber Defamation, Morphing, Email Spoofing, Cyber Pornography is taken into consideration as an exceptional case which has been covered by the IT Act 2000. The offender can be punished with the IPC sections 290, 292, 292A, 293, 294, 509.
Morphing: Morphing is editing the original picture so as to make it look completely or largely different. Often criminals download pictures of girls from websites such as Facebook and then morph it with another picture in compromising situation so as to represent that those women were indulging in such acts. Later they blackmail those women through the threat of releasing the morphed images and diminishing the status of those women in society.
The recent Air Force Balbharati School case (Delhi)[5] is a recent case comes under
this category where a student of the School was teased by all his classmates for having a pockmarked face. He, who is tired of the cruel jokes, decided to get back at his tormentors and scanned photograph of his classmates and teachers, morphed them with nude photographs and put them up on a website that he uploaded on to a free web hosting service. The father of one of the class girls featured on the website came to know about this and lodged a complaint with the police.
Such acts can be penalised under I.T. Act, 2000 and attracts sec. 43 & 66 of the said
Act. The violator can also be booked under IPC sec 509 also.
By : Nihar Lalas
[1] Student of Law at National Law University, Odisha. India
[2] http://cyberlaws.net/cyberindia/defamation.htm
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DPS_MMS_Scandal
[4] https://vikaspedia.in/social-welfare/women-and-child-development/women-development-1/legal-awareness-for-women/cyber-crimes-against-women
[5] Abhimanyu Behera, “ Cyber Crimes and Law In India,” XXXI,IJCC 19 (2010)
This is actually informative article. It gives alot of information about the legal side of cyber crime with mentioning the sections of the acts like IPC and IT
It’s very informative and knowledgeable
Very nicely written and also very informative
This blog is extremely informative and very well researched!!
The article is nicely written. Another relevant section of the IT act with regards to cyber stalking is 66E which provides punishment for violation of privacy in the cyberspace.
The recent case of the Bois Locker room has in a way brought an awareness among the mass about the various legal remedies available, especially for women who are constant preys to cyber crimes. The Indirect Representation of Women Act, 1986 also provides for some relief to women in addition to the legal provisions mentioned in the article.
I agree with the author
Amazing and very informative article. The article has brilliantly put different types of cyber-crimes and the punishment for the same in IT Act & IPC. With the recent cases of sexual harassment, this article will be helpful for the people to know about their rights and take actions accordingly.
Women no doubt are more likely to fall prey to cyber crimes online. This is because of sexually motivated ill intentions or revenge etc. This article puts light on various aspects through which women are subjected to cyber crimes and how vulnerable they are on social media. More awareness should be spread about these punishable acts and the forums through which such crimes can be reported. Women should be encouraged to lodge complaints if they face such crimes online.
Being a victim of cyber harassment, I can say that your article was very helpful
I agree with the author completely that women are targeted more because of the ‘victim blaming’ nature of the society. They are considered as an easy target by the predators.
It is a very helpful article and mostly for those girls who are in their teen years and are new to this cyber world.
Very well written.
Very useful article for all women’s
A survey has found women more prone to cyber attacks than men. This article has highlighted the major cyber crimes against women and the relevant legislations to those.
In vedic era women were respected but after that as we move towards the medieval era we can see a drastic change in the situation of women. This was due to our society and misinterpretation of the sacred texts and manipulation by the scholars of the texts. Women now face problem every where they go, they are not even safe in thier own home. It is sad to see that out of lust, greed or revenge even children of tender age are committing such offences it is important for the user to be very careful especially a women because the times are such that no one can be trusted.
As we all know that mostly women became victim of such offences, this Article give us information about those offences which were done by using modern technology.
The article is well written and i like the way how he elaborate the case.
No doubt that women are victims of such crimes in most cases. They have to face many problems like blackmail and they are very sensitive in this case also, they thought about their family and the society and hence one of the reasons to get mentally harassed. This article explains the various crimes committed against women in the cyber world. There is a need for proper implementation of those laws to reduce the rate of such crimes.
informative article with the situation in the present time that the women are becoming the victims of cyber crime and for this the people must get the information of how to be safe and what are the provisions for the victims are mentioned in the article.
Cybercrimes against women happen at a very large scale. women are harassed, stalked, blackmailed on social media, this also causes a mental trauma to them. The article was very informative .
This blog is very useful to understand. According to the National Commission for Women data there is a significant increase in cyber crimes against women during lockdown.