Woman names, shames Facebook perverts, files FIR

32-year-old Juhu resident posts obscene message that four men sent to her back on their Facebook walls; police ask cyber police for help to track them down

A 32-year-old woman from Juhu has filed an FIR with the Juhu police station against four people who had sent obscene messages to her Facebook inbox. While the messages had been sent in April, Tara Kaushal only just saw them as they had been saved in the rarely-seen ‘other’ folder on her Facebook page.

Also read: Woman uses Facebook to trace pervert who traumatised her daughter

Tara Kaushal. Pic/Sahil Mane

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Senior inspector of Juhu police station, Sunil Rajaram Ghosalkar, said, “The case was filed on Thursday. We will be seeking technical help from the cyber police station. We need to track the IP addresses of the people using these profiles. This should take at least 72 hours. Arrests will be made only after their IP addresses are tracked.”

Also read: Minor girl molested by man after obscene posts on Facebook; 3 booked

Kaushal, meanwhile, has done her bit by shaming the four men — Mohammed Ansari, Hadimani TF, Sabir Gadekar and Mohit Bobade — on their Facebook walls.

Equal response
On Wednesday, Kaushal published a series of screenshots of their obscene messages on her Facebook profile. Hadimani’s profile shows him to have worked as an illustrator with two extremely well-known publications in the country. “I went to his profile to check if he was legitimate, and there was ample proof of his work.” Hadimani was in 2013 (according to a news report) arrested for sexually harassing a woman writer. The same article also stated that an employee with a TV network had filed a similar complaint against him at a police station in Bengaluru, a few months before the arrest. “This will be the third sexual harassment case against him,” Kaushal said. She has posted all his vulgar messages on his wall saying ‘Hello, this is how Hadimani speaks to women!’ “I have not yet received a reply to these posts,” she said.

Also read: Are YouTube, Facebook, Twitter hiding female abuse data?

Mohammed Ansari, the other man who sent her obscene messages, is apparently married with a child. She posted his messages on his Facebook wall, too. She has done the same with the other two men.

Not a new story
“I have been naming and shaming on my Facebook wall since 2014,” said Kaushal, who is currently working on a book called ‘Why Indian Men Rape’. “The reason we have such a high rate of sexual violence in India is because there is no fear of the law and no accountability for such acts of harassment.”

Also read: Youth arrested for posting obscene comments on sister-in-law's facebook account

Earlier in the day, before lodging the FIR, she had written a letter to the police, stating, “I would like you to please locate these gentlemen, and prosecute them. I would like men like these to know that the internet is not beyond the reach of the law. I would like women to know that ignoring and naming-shaming are not their only options, and to seek legal recourse.”

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