Mind The Gap: In a world that normalises violence against women, digital violence is a new threat
In a world already grappling with physical violence against women, digital abuse poses a newer threat.
Yet another woman has died by suicide. Her brother says she was being tortured by her husband who routinely had affairs since their marriage in 2010. For 15 years, Deepti Chaurasia, married to the son of pan masala magnate Kamal Kishore, endured. Her brother claims, “When we got to know about it, we took our daughter home…After that, her mother-in-law took her back. My sister used to call me and say that she was tortured and that her husband had affairs.”
What is this language—took her, took her back—that denies agency to an adult women undergoing abuse?
Now the 38-year-old sister is dead, her brother says he wants justice and the husband Arpit and his mother have been arrested on charges of abetting suicide.
The tragedy comes within days of the release of a 500-page police chargesheet into the murder of Nikki Bhati, planned by her husband Vipin and his mother who on August 21 set her ablaze reportedly in the presence of her six-year-old son.
But the tragedy also coincides with 16 Days of Activism, UN Women’s annual campaign that highlights ongoing violence against women. The data is depressing. One in three women and girls all over the world—and no country is exempt—is subjected to physical or sexual violence.
{{/usCountry}}But the tragedy also coincides with 16 Days of Activism, UN Women’s annual campaign that highlights ongoing violence against women. The data is depressing. One in three women and girls all over the world—and no country is exempt—is subjected to physical or sexual violence.
{{/usCountry}}Violence against women is a crime in plain sight. It’s the one we look away from, loathe to interfere when sounds from a neighbour’s home might warrant a knock on the door; reluctant to recognize that the constant berating of a woman by her husband is in fact abuse.
{{/usCountry}}Violence against women is a crime in plain sight. It’s the one we look away from, loathe to interfere when sounds from a neighbour’s home might warrant a knock on the door; reluctant to recognize that the constant berating of a woman by her husband is in fact abuse.
{{/usCountry}}In 2024, estimates UN Women, 50,000 women and girls worldwide were killed by an intimate partner or family member. To see it another way, 60% of all female homicides last year were committed by a family member. That’s 137 women a day.
{{/usCountry}}In 2024, estimates UN Women, 50,000 women and girls worldwide were killed by an intimate partner or family member. To see it another way, 60% of all female homicides last year were committed by a family member. That’s 137 women a day.
{{/usCountry}}Not only have we normalized violence as something that just happens, sheer bad luck, we have found reasons to justify it. Poorly cooked meal, leaving home without a husband’s permission, disrespecting in-laws are all valid reasons for a beating, believe 45.4% of women and 44% of men, according to the National Family Health Survey-5.
Rise of a new menace
If violence against women isn’t already bad enough, this year, UN Women is focusing on a newer form of violence—digital violence or violence that is being enabled by technology. This includes stalking, doxxing, deepfakes, sharing of non-consensual intimate images and targeted harassment, particularly of high-profile women, with journalists and those in public life being singled out for attack.
Artificial Intelligence is making things worse. “Image-based abuse is exploding, with an estimated 90 to 95 per cent of online deepfakes depicting women in sexualized ways,” says a UN Women explainer.
What happens online results in offline harms. A report released early in November, Make it Real looks at how AI-generated content, or deepfakes, is impacting not just celebrities but ordinary women and girls through images that are artificially manipulated to harm, humiliate and shame them.
Digital abuse is increasingly linked to violent extremism. It results in the silencing of women’s voices on social media platforms. It can cause financial loss in business.
Last week I spoke to an incredibly brave young woman who discovered to her utter shock that a former boyfriend had leaked a non-consensual intimate video on social media from where it had spread to 120 porn sites and social media platforms. The woman decided to file a complaint with the police and the abuser was arrested. But the video proved trickier to take down; when it was removed from one site, it would resurface on another.
The woman then went to court and the court ordered the government to frame procedures to deal with such complaints. In October, the Ministry of electronics and information technology a nine-page protocol was presented with information about where and how to lodge a complaint and steps to ensure that such images were scrubbed clean.
It was one tiny but significant victory in the battle against gender-based violence.
[Meity’s standard operating procedure to curtail dissemination of non-consensual intimate imagery content contains information on where and how to lodge a complaint. Read it here.]
