Crime against women is on a rise in all the fields but being a victim of cybercrime could be the most traumatic experience for a woman. Especially in a country like India where the society looks down upon the women and the law doesn’t even properly recognize cyber crimes. One woman every second gets tricked to be a victim of cyber crimes in India and the online platform is now the new platform where a woman’s dignity, privacy and security is increasingly being challenged every moment. The effect in cyber crimes against women is more mental than physical while the focus of the laws ensuring women’s security is more on physical than mental harm.

Forms of Cyber Violence against women

Cyber Stalking

Cyber stalking is stalking by means of email, text messages, comments or sharing intimate photos on the internet that are offensive or threatening. Stalking involves acts that undermine the victim’s sense of safety and cause distress, fear or alarm. These acts must take place repeatedly and be perpetrated by the same person to be considered as cyber stalking.

Cyber Harassment

Cyber harassment can take many forms. But for the purpose of this article, it includes unwanted sexually explicit emails, text (or online) messages; Inappropriate or offensive advances on social networking websites or internet chat rooms; Threats of physical and/or sexual violence by email, text (or online) messages; Hate speech, meaning language that denigrates, insults, threatens or targets an individual based on her identity (gender) and other traits (such as sexual orientation or disability)

Cyber Defamation

          Defamation is the intention to harm the reputation of a particular person knowing that their conduct is likely to cause such harm to the reputation. Cyber defamation is to defame through internet. Section 67 under IT Act, 2000 deals with publication of obscene material and provides for imprisonment up to a term of ten years and also with fine upto two lacs. The IT Act, however, does not cover cyber defamation specifically, thus, to seek remedy against the cyber defamation the aggrieved party will have to initiate the proceedings under the provisions of IPC.

Morphing

         Morphing is highly increasing it is done by editing the original picture to misuse it. Perpetrators due to internet access can in few seconds download women’s pictures from social media, WhatsApp or some other resources and upload morphed photos on other websites such as porn sites, social media site,  or for registering themselves anonymously.

Non Consensual Pornography

          It means portrayal of sexual material on the web. It is a threat to the female netizens as they never know which actions of theirs are being recorded and would later end up on internet. The DPS MMS scandal 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.

E-mail Spoofing

          E-mail spoofing describes fraudulent email activity in which the sender address and other parts of the email header are altered to appear as though the email originated from a different source; it is done by properties of the email, such as the From, Return-Path and Reply-To fields, ill-intentioned users can make the email appear to be from someone other than the actual sender. This method is often used by cyber criminals to extract personal information and private images from unsuspecting women, these images etc. are then used to blackmail those women. The most popular case of cyber spoofing is Gujarat Ambuja’s Executive Case, in this case the perpetrator pretended to be a girl for cheating and blackmailing the Abu Dhabi based NRI.[1]

Reporting a cyber crime

          The procedure for reporting cyber crimes is more or less the same as for reporting any other kind of offence. The local police stations can be approached for filing complaints as the cybercrime cells specially designated with the jurisdiction to register complaint. In addition, provisions have now been made for filing of ‘E-FIR’ in most of the states. Every police station must have expert-trained police officer who can immediately deal with cyber crime complaints made. If a police station refuses to register the complaint, a representation may be given to the commissioner of police/superintendent of police. If in spite of that action is not taken, the next step could either be a private complaint before the concerned court or a writ before the high court.[2]

Conclusion

          Cybercrimes against women are still taken lightly in India mostly due to decrease in the respect toward women. E-mail spoofing and Morphing do not have a moral backing in society and hence are taken lightly. This brings us the realization for social advancement that is needed, people need to recognize the rights of others and realize what constitutes crime. It can be done if people are taught from a young age to respect women. Hence, not only stricter penal reforms are needed but also a change in education system is a huge requirement to counter cybercrime against women in India. Such change cannot come from within a single block of society but people, government and NGOs etc need to work together to bring forth such changes.

By

Deepika Pandey

2nd Year LLB Student

Bharati Vidyapeeth New Law College

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[1] Rajat Mishra, Cybercrime against women, https://www.SSRN-id2486125.pdf

[2] Dhruti M Kapadia, Cyber Crimes Against Women and Laws in India, Live Law.in , https://www.livelaw.in/cyber-crimes-against-women-and-laws-in-india/