These incidents of Islamophobic cyber sexual harassment, coming in quick succession, point towards the inadequacy of the regulatory and redressal systems of social media platforms.
Twitter’s ‘Hateful Conduct Policy’ puts the onus of reporting incidents of hateful conduct and abuse on the aggrieved persons. Journalist Sania Ahmad believes it to be unreasonable that the “onus should be put on women to run after these cases and be threatened and abused more in the process.”
Tanwir, her lawyer, sent a legal notice to Twitter demanding that the platform take action against these accounts by permanently suspending and banning them from future use of the platform. He also suggests that platforms should ensure inclusion of local languages and their transliteration to recognize violent threats in languages other than English.
Saif Alam, Zohra’s lawyer, has faced difficulty in getting social media platforms to comply with the investigation requirements. He told BehanBox about a website, “sullidealing.co.in”, hosted on GoDaddy. While the website has now been taken down after complaints, the domain name still exists on the web hosting company.
“We are certain that this is the work of an organised ecosystem. If we are able to track down the owner of this domain, it will help the investigation. GoDaddy.com has refused to give information to the Mumbai police on the details of the owner of the domain. They have asked for a subpoena instead ”, said Alam.
“I believe it should be mandatory for these websites and social media platforms to comply with such requests made for the investigation of a case, especially if it is coming from a law enforcement agency,” he said.
“The problem is that an offence such as this is not specifically provided for in the IPC”, said Bhandari. “ Amending Section 66E of the IT Act would be an easy fix, which can handle non-consensual uploading of photos online, without necessarily adding more criminal provisions in the law”, she said. Section 66E is one of the few provisions in the IT Act that puts consent and hence, autonomy at the heart of the offence.
The current redressal mechanisms of social media platforms suffers due to a lack of direct synergy between the social media companies and local police on the reporting standards mandated by the National Crime Records Bureau( NCRB) write Mitali Mukherjee, Aditi Ratho and Shruti Jain in their paper ‘Unsocial Media: Inclusion, Representation, and Safety for Women on Social Networking Platforms’. They also observe that vague definitions for gendered abuse, violent behaviour and harassment make subjective targeting of individuals easier along with the fact that police are more likely to take action on physical threats and traditional criminal laws.
“The patriarchal nature of the criminal prosecution system advises women against filing complaints in such matters, playing down the severity of the crime for the lack of a “real physical threat”, said Tanwir. In most cases police officials discourage women from filing complaints because they just don’t want to work, he adds.
Hasiba Amin and Sania Ahmed, represented by Tanwir, plan to approach the Saket court in Delhi to reopen the case and launch an investigation into the incidents prior to Eid.
Facebook, Google, TikTok and Twitter made a commitment to tackle online abuse and improve women’s safety on their platforms at the recent UN Generation Equality Forum in Paris, by improving their reporting systems.
Meanwhile, women, especially from the marginalised communities, continue to face the brunt of inadequate redressal mechanisms. Shaikh Tabinda, Fatima Zohra and Noor Mahvish, however, are resolute in their decision to fight against these hate crimes.
“We may be disturbed right now but we stand strong by our decision to resist this,” said Tabinda.
“They’ve been taking advantage of the nature of the judicial processes in India but I will fight this case even if I have to fight till my last breath. I will do it for myself and for my community,” asserts Noor.
“I need to be able to answer for myself when the future generations ask me what I did to fight back,” Zohra.