Hyderabad: Twelve hours after activist Sunitha Krishnan went online on social media with her “Shame the Rapist” campaign, the founder of the anti-trafficking organisation Prajwala, came under attack. Her car was vandalised near her office, near the Charminar bus stand on Friday morning. The attack took place soon after national television coverage of the campaign. But the activist — no stranger to these attacks only thanked the attacker for giving her national campaign more mileage than it possibly could have got.
Police personnel examine Sunitha Krishnan’s car that was damaged by unidentified persons near the Charminar bus stand on Friday. (Photo: DECCAN CHRONICLE)
“I honestly don’t know if the attack was related to my campaign or not. But it’s just the timing of the incident that got me wondering,” she said. Having filed a police complaint about the attack on her car, she, however, asserted, “I have not asked for police protection. I am urging the country to protect its women and children and that’s what my campaign is about as well,” she added. Rubbishing any possible criticism that the alleged vandalism was just a way to accelerate the campaign, she said, “The campaign is not about Sunitha Krishnan. It’s about dragging the culprits out,” she said.
‘Nauseating’ footage
On Thursday afternoon, Prajwala posted on its Facebook wall two videos of rape. Ms Krishnan’s “Shame the Rapist” campaign revolves around these viral videos of sexual abuse that have been doing the rounds for at least is six months. “We don’t know how old these are. Six months is an estimation made after we got a call from someone saying that the video was sent six months ago.”
The unedited footage one of eight minutes, has five men, and another one has a woman begging to be released from the grips of another were edited by her filmmaker husband Rajesh Touchriver. He blurred out the victim’s face to protect her identity and shortened the duration.
When Ms Krishnan received the video on WhatsApp, she was “…shaken. Fifteen seconds into the clip, it nauseated me,” she said.“Having survived rape myself, this is not new to me. But what made me really angry was that it was shared and shared without anyone stepping up to do anything about it,” she added.
Why use social media?
YouTube on Friday decided to take down the videos that Ms Krishnan had wanted the public to circulate and help identify the rapists. “I choose social media for a lot of reasons. One, the video is not from Andhra Pradesh or Telangana or South India. It had to be national. Two, I wanted people to become the agents of change by giving a reality check as their tolerance level to crimes have gone up,” she said.
As of now, the videos have gone viral on Facebook and Twitter with people sharing the links that are still functional on Prajwala’s official pages. “I really don’t understand why YouTube took them down, when there is so much pornographic content on the site. These videos were clearly uploaded with the intention to spread word about these rapists and to ensure that people trace and report them,” she said.
Need cyber crime fighting mechanism
Ms Krishnan will be taking the footage to the Union home ministry on Monday. The idea is to not stop with just these two clips. Ms Krishnan says she has received more than 10 such videos, so the scope of this campaign is larger. “From these cases and clips, I want to urge the authorities to put in place and create a mechanism to help people report crimes when it lands in their inbox. A system that is not threatening to the common man, a safe domain. Right now, the system is very hostile. I think even these girls did not report it,” she said.
It also comes from her own experience with the girls she has rescued through Prajwala. “My girls have told me ‘While you have brought us and put us in your shelter, our videos are still doing rounds.’ That’s when I feel helpless. For the police the work is done when they are rescued. There needs to be a mechanism to protect girls from such atrocities,” she said.
