KASARGOD: In July, a watchman of the Milma dairy plant at Mavungal was fired from his job after he used a derogatory word to describe Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Facebook.
On September 16, Hosdurg police booked the personal assistant of Kanhangad municipal chairman VV Rameshan for allegedly slandering the former chief minister Oommen Chandy on Facebook. The PA, Venugopalan, did not even write Oommen Chandy in his message. He wrote OC, and yet the police booked him.
Two days later on September 18, T V Hemalatha -- a woman who runs an Akshaya Centre and who ran a gym till Monday -- approached the Bekal police station with a complaint saying two fake voice messages were doing the rounds on WhatsApp that she had eloped with a former colleague. The voice clips were forwarded along with a photograph of Hemalatha and her former colleague she had posted on Facebook.
After 10 days, the Bekal police were yet to register an FIR. She is now contemplating staging a satyagraha in front of the police station for justice. Police officers said the slandering of a public figure and a private individual was treated differently by the law because of the fear of rioting in the former's case.
But Hemalatha would have none of it because the messages have created a riot in her own life. "I contemplated ending my life. But when I got support from my family and society, I decided to track down the perpetrators," she said. And track down, she did.
On September 17, Hemalatha's friends send her two voice clips -- one in a male voice and another in female voice -- saying she had eloped with her colleague. At first, she thought they were a prank. But soon, she started getting calls from her relatives and friends.
The voice clip was shared with a photograph of Hemalatha and her colleague she posted on Facebook in February. "I had posted the photograph to wish him on his birthday," she said. The next day, she filed a complaint with Bekal police asking them to track down the perpetrators. "But the police did not inspire confidence in me," she said.
So Hemalatha and her sister-in-law (brother's wife) started making calls to track the creators of the fake messages. She first called friends who forwarded the messages to her to find out where they got them. A person shared the message even in her son's office WhatsApp group. "I blasted the person for sharing the unverified message," she said.
The two women called at least 50 phone numbers in two days. They would call the person who forwarded the message in a group. "They would tell that they got the message from another group. Then we contact the person in the previous group. If they refused to divulge the details we threatened to file a cyber case against them," she said.
After two days, they reached a WhatsApp group called Kali Kupi Fans or Empty Bottle Fans. "It was a group for people in Cheemeni but I found that my neighbour Abhilash had created the voice message in the group," Hemalatha said. Abhilash is a driver for Milma.
She and her friends confronted him and he admitted to making the voice clip. On September 20, she dragged him to Bekal police station from where she made him confess to the crime on camera. Later, she sent the videos from his phone to all the WhatsApp groups he was a member of.
But she found out that the complaint she filed on September 18 was missing from the station. "So I filed another complaint on September 20. But a case has not yet been registered," she said.
Her quest to find the female voice ended at a phone number registered in the Gulf.
Bekal police said that her complaint sought to know who the perpetrators were and it was duly forwarded to the Cyber Cell. "But the fact is it is a case of defamation, and she should approach the court and not a police station," said Bekal sub-inspector Ajith Kumar.
Senior officers said not many people know that they could approach the jurisdictional court directly in civil matters such as defamation, and to press charges in the case of non-cognisable offenses. "In this particular case, Hemalatha was defamed in social media by misrepresenting facts. Section 66 A of the IT Act which dealt with it was scrapped by the Supreme Court. The messages do not attract Section 67 because there is nothing obscene in them," said a senior officer.
It was hard to charge the perpetrators with Section 509 B (sexual harassment by electronic mode) of IPC because there was no sexual intent in the voice clip even though they cause a lot of mental agonies, he said.
Section 120 (o) of the Kerala Police Act which deals with causing a nuisance through any means of communication can be applied here but it is a non-cognisable office and the police are not obliged to investigate it, said the senior officer. "But she can always approach the judicial first class magistrate for justice," he said.
But when a politician is abused in social media, their supporters take out a protest march and threaten to riot, said the officers. "That gives us reason to invoke Section 153 of the IPC. Along that section, we add Section 120 (0) of the KP Act too. That's how Venugopalan was booked," said an officer of Hosdurg police.
When told about this, Hemalatha said: "So they want me to create a riot to get justice".