Bengaluru: Woman writer gets lewd message on Facebook, files complaint

Bengaluru: A 35-year-old freelance writer and columnist writing for a Kannada news portal has lodged a police complaint on Saturday after she received lewd, communally provocative and anti-feminist messages on her Facebook wall from groups claiming to be right-wing fundamentalists.

The writer, identified as Chetana Thirthahalli, alleged that she has been receiving these messages from Facebook groups titled ‘Jagritha Bharatha’ and ‘Veera Kesari’ and according to the writer both appeared to be fake.

“I have been harassed by these filthy, vulgar and communally provocative messages over the last two to three months from the two groups, which I found were fake ones. But later I started getting such messages from one ‘Madhusudhan Gowda’, who started messaging me regularly especially after reading about my write-ups on Facebook,” Chetana said. “His threats and messages were outrageous, derogatory, intimidating, communal in nature, anti-feminist and often obscene,” she said in her complaint with the Hanumanthnagar police.

“Their (groups’) demands were that I should not be writing anything against their ideologies. They also demanded that I should not write for the news portal because it is owned by an person from minority community, also demanding that I should not write anything anti-Hindu, anti-Modi or on feminism,” said Chetana. After I recently took part in the beef-eating protest held in Town Hall, they condemned it and used the ugliest of the messages intended to defame me and my character,” she said.

“With the recent development on attack on writers, I do not feel safe as I have a family and my son to take care of,” Chetana said. The Hanumanthanagar police have registered a case under section 504 (Intentional insult with intent to provoke breach of peace), 506 (Punishment for criminal intimidation) and 509 (word gesture or act intended to insult the modesty of a woman) which will be referred to cyber crime police.