When a woman blocks an abusive account and the same person tries to contact her using another channel, the matter turns out to be far worse. The woman now starts receiving messages that mention her workplace, her day, her family and she is now under complete surveillance. Yet the advice she most often receives is told to lay low, make her profile private, and to simply ignore.
This advice is for her to suffer someone else's conduct. It also fails to address the question any investigator would ask: What does the behaviour tell the about access, intent and potential for escalation of the offender? During the investigations IIRIS undertakes for companies, institutions and individuals, the repeated contacts are never perceived as a series of unrelated events but read like a pattern. Women facing online abuse deserve the same seriousness.
The scale of the problem is no longer a second guess. The Committee on the Empowerment of Women of Parliament in March 2026 highlighted the data of the NCRB that the number of cybercrimes against women has increased by almost 239% in the last five years, from 2017 to 2022. It also noted over 2.48 lakh complaints on the National Cyber Crime Reporting Portal for women and children during 2019-25 April. These figures count only those who came forward. Many more suffer the abuse silently or exit platforms that now influence study, work and civic life.
Harassment and stalking are on a continuum. Persistent contact after refusal, impersonation accounts, threats to circulate intimate images and attempts to publish a woman's address are all part of the same behavior, not distinct complaints. The challenge is that each platform sees only its own fragment. The fragmentation benefits the offender moving from one service to another, while the woman is left to re-establish her case at each service.
{{/usCountry}}Harassment and stalking are on a continuum. Persistent contact after refusal, impersonation accounts, threats to circulate intimate images and attempts to publish a woman's address are all part of the same behavior, not distinct complaints. The challenge is that each platform sees only its own fragment. The fragmentation benefits the offender moving from one service to another, while the woman is left to re-establish her case at each service.
{{/usCountry}}The legislation has already come a long way. According to Section 78 of Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, a man who is monitoring a woman's use of internet, email or any other electronic communication will be considered to be stalking. The new intermediary rules mandate removal of certain intimate/impersonation content within two hours of a complaint. The difference is how these protections are made accessible for a woman who is afraid, not familiar with legal terminology and afraid of getting herself in more trouble should she report.
Security response begins with triage. The beginning for the risk professionals lies in three simple questions. Have the victim’s accounts or devices been compromised? Does the person have her home address, where she works or travels? Could he have mentioned physical hard? Even one of these indicators visible on a complaint must reach a trained officer immediately and not find way to an automated complaint acknowledgement. The cyber helpline 1930 and the reporting portal should start a response, with a named point of contact and a clear account of next steps, while 112 remains the call to make when danger is immediate.
Evidence is where cybersecurity meets justice. A screenshot shows a moment, but account identifiers, timestamps and links with their original messages create a sequence, which is the proof of stalking. Platforms should retain those records securely while they getting rid of harmful content, so that relief doesn't come at the cost of prosecution. Women deserve confidential support to accurately document abuse without taking on forensic examiner duties.
Advice on safety should also take into account the fact that the offence is likely to be carried out by someone known. Either a former partner or family member may already have a recovery email, a shared password or an application to track her on her phone. While changing passwords, 2 step verification and a review of location sharing all help, changing everything at once can alert an abuser and raise the risk. Safety planning, sometimes through a separate device, should come before any visible change. Protective security teams work this way, and women's support services should too.
Fundamentally, policy should provide resources to implement the policy. The parliamentary committee reported on several areas of lack of skilled cyber investigators and forensic analysts. Practical training of police in relation to digital evidence and understanding coercive behaviour without blaming the complainant is needed. There should be confidential reporting lines in place, which also cover behaviour in online environments, implemented at colleges and employers. Platforms should be able to connect repeat incidents to a single report, and clarify their actions and pass serious threats to trained evaluators. There should also be assistance in Indian languages as a system designed for only confident English-speaking users will exclude most women.
There is a need to take the awareness beyond women. Parents, guardians and friends should be aware that the initial reaction to a disclosure should be support rather than a question as to why she posted a photograph. There needs to be a clear message sent to men and boys that sending something intimate of someone, or engaging unnecessarily online isn't harmless.
Success should be measured by the promptness of complaints to be acted upon, if repeat abuse does fall and if women continue to study, work and speak freely online. Internet has connected many millions of women online, and the big challenge will now be if they can hold on to these connections independently. A safer digital India would be one which changes the mindset of the offender, not asking the woman to move out of the picture.
(The views expressed are personal)
This article is authored by Sagarika Chakraborty, CEO, IIRIS Consulting, a forensic intelligence, investigations and risk advisory firm.