Podcast on Honey Trap Fraud on the Internet - with Adv. Chaitanya Bhandari
Q. Do you believe that the legal remedies provided in India to combat sensitive Cybercrimes are sufficient?
A. Well, yes, I think India has one of the strongest acts today and we are one of the first few countries who came in together to formulate this act and start working on this subject. So, I think we are good enough when you compare it with the other laws and regulations that we have in India. We have a good document in place but implementation or usage of the document is still a million-dollar question.
Q. Do you believe that crimes like cyberstalking, image-based sexual abuse, etc. are gender-based crimes and affect women more?
A. Its not that the crimes happen more with women, but reporting happens more with women because as a society we kind of teach girls that it is okay to cry or to ask for help, but, unfortunately, even today society tells the boys that you can’t complain or you can’t be cheated because you are a boy. Because of these psychological factors that go into a child’s mind, there are few complaints as far as the male gender is concerned. Therefore, the reporting happens more with women. In my opinion, however, both the segments, even the transgender segment for that matter are equally susceptible to these kinds of crimes and I don’t see any difference in the impact of such crimes at all. Well, my NGO, called Amanzo, deal with a lot of children’s issues therefore we get more reports on kids.
Q. What impact do these online crimes have on the victims, and how do they cope with it? Are there organizations in our country that help them?
A. The psychological effect that it creates is really really bad especially among children because they tend to believe what they hear and see multiple times. For example, if you run the statistics among the psychologists they say that there is an increased level of sexual orientation or sexual perverts between children today because they are exposed to unwanted data which is not right for their age, and they tend to believe what they see. This problem is really difficult to manage because people really need to understand and accept that there is a problem like this. In a country like India, where even discussing about psychological impacts is taboo, a lot of awareness and education amongst the society is required. And the helping can only be done by counsellors or psychological professionals.