‘Bois Locker Room’ rerun: Kolkata Police investigate JU student’s allegation of online abuse
The complainant said men in a WhatsApp group chat were verbally fantasising of sexually assaulting her.
The Kolkata Police’s cybercrime department has registered a complaint of intent to outrage modesty against unidentified men after a 22-year-old Jadavpur University student accused them of sharing her photos without consent and for making derogatory remarks about her, The Times of India reported on Friday.
This came days after “Bois Locker Room”, an Instagram group on which teenage boys from South Delhi schools talked about raping girls, and sexually objectified and shared photos of several underage girls, was exposed. Massive outrage erupted after several social media users posted screenshots of the crude conversations where participants were as young as 13 casually discussed “gang-raping” girls.
The complainant said the police contacted her on Wednesday night after she sent an email about the online abuse. She was asked to draft a formal complaint and send it to them. “I have done so and I just want cops to act fast on the abusers and take stern action against the men,” she said.
“We have got her complaint and are verifying the facts now,” a senior police officer told the newspaper. “We will also speak to the victim and others she has mentioned in the complaint as the case progresses.”
In January, the student said, she received a screenshot of a WhatsApp chat from an unknown youth. “The screenshot had a photograph of mine where random men were commenting on my private parts and were verbally fantasising of sexually assaulting me,” she told The Times of India. “I had asked the youth the details of the men. He said he was a part of the group but felt bad when he saw my image popping up and thought of warning me. He said some the men were from my university only but didn’t reveal their names and hadn’t replied to my next few queries.”
She said she wanted to expose the men after the Delhi Police cracked down on the “Bois Locker Room” chat.
The accused in the case used “semi-nude and nude pictures” of women in a Google drive to circulate it among their friends, according to News18. Women reportedly said that the Google drive had been an “open secret” in Jadavpur University and they did not have evidence to implicate the men previously.
“We were disgusted and made it clear that we were not interested to see the drive,” one of the women told News18. “I was in the first year back then and did not really had the courage to oppose him. We were dumbfounded, and I chose to ignore it back then.”
Also read: