Press Organisations Issue Statement of Solidarity After 'Vicious Trolling' of Journalists Post Pulwama Attack

In light of incessant trolling of certain journalists following the Pulwama attack, journalists have come out in solidarity and asked the Union Home Ministry to discourage the "vicious trolling" following the Pulwama attack.

Several journalists including Barkha Dutt, Ravish Kumar and others were severely trolled on social media after they posted about the harassment of Kashmiris in several parts of the country following the Feb 14 Fidayeen attack that killed 44 Central Reserve Police Force troops.

Condemning the attacks, the Women's Press Corps, Press Club of India and Press Association have together put out a statement asking the Home Ministry to book the persons spreading hate against the journalists.

Referring to the targeted trolling, the statement said "Such messages have the potential of inciting hatered and invariably leading to hate crime. We urge the governmnet to look into this with the urgency it deserves."

On Monday, journalist Barkha Dutt took to Twitter to talk about the abuse she had been facing for 48 hours. According to her tweets, Dutt was constantly harrassed with death and rape threats by an army of trolls after some one circulated her phone number on social media.

"I had close to 1000 abusive messages and calls in a Cordinated and violent mob attack. These included a message to shoot me, a nude photo, many sexually abusive messages," she wrote in a tweet.

However, Dutt faced flak from Twitter after she called out the trolls on Twitter and posted their personal details including phone numbers. "I outed the men who did this. Twitter locked me till many of the details were taken down," she wrote. While women were subjected to extremely sexist trolling, male journalists were not spared either with many of their numbers leaked including Rajdeep Sardesai's, Ravish Kumar's among others. Each received abusive calls and death threats.

Shameless BJP supporters are abusing, and giving death threats to Ravish Kumar, Prashant Bhushan etc.

They are making their numbers public & indirectly asking others to do the same

This is one such WhatsApp group of these shameless people - pic.twitter.com/1dfXZuwdjF

— Dhruv Rathee (@dhruv_rathee) February 18, 2019

Journalist Abhisar Sharma even accused the governmnet's IT Cell for leaking his number on WhatsApp and spreading a hate campaign against him, a claim that was supported by lawyer and activist Prashant Bhushan who also faced severe trolling.

I have filed a complaint against all this abuse after IT CELL PEOPLE MADE my number public again on their whats app groups. There r even threats to rape my family members . @DelhiPolice @Uppolice . But i doubt any action will be taken like always . pic.twitter.com/proSUyyWSN — Abhisar Sharma (@abhisar_sharma) February 18, 2019

Rajdeep Sardesai also reported receiving abusive phone calls while others shared screenshots of the WhatsApp messages that were circulating.

Over a 100 abusive and threatening phone calls and counting since morning.. abuse doesn’t fit in with a Bharat Mata ki jai slogan folks.. want to put up phone numbers on Facebook, do so. Want to call, do so.. but to call to abuse is cowardice friends.. gnight shubhratri!

— Rajdeep Sardesai (@sardesairajdeep) February 18, 2019