New Delhi, August 14 (The Hindustan Times): Sharmistha Mukherjee, daughter of India’s President Pranab Mukherjee, on Saturday named and shamed a man identifying himself as Partha Mandal for sending her obscene messages on Facebook.
“This pervert Partha Mandal is sending me dirty sexual messages. My first reaction was to ignore & block him. But then I thought the silence would encourage him to find other victims,” Sharmistha, who is also a Congress party leader, wrote on Facebook.
She said she made her profile public after joining politics in order to get suggestions and complaints from people. Mondal had allegedly sent obscene messages to Sharmistha on Friday night.
Such harassment is not anything new on the internet and hundreds of thousands of people suffer it every day on social media. But instead of letting the matter go, Sharmistha decided to fight back by sharing the obscene message to publicly shame her harasser. She told Hindustan Times that she would also lodge a complaint with police.
“Just blocking and reporting is not enough. I strongly feel such people should be publicly exposed & humiliated. I’m posting screenshots of his profile & messages he sent me,” she wrote.
“I’m also tagging him. Please share this post & tag this rat as a message that these pervert acts will not be taken lightly.”
When HT got in touch with Sharmistha, she said she initially thought of ignoring the message but she realised that the “offender will offend other women”.
“I decided to share the messages because there is a need for public exposure and public humiliation of such people,” Sharmistha said.
“Generally girls or women block such a person. But that never helps because the offenders take advantage of the situation and humiliate others.”
She said police would take immediate action in her case only because she is President Pranab Mukherjee’s daughter, but she doesn’t want any special treatment.
“I want the police to be active in case of complaint lodged by any women. Therefore, I will quietly go to the police and lodge a complaint. I will fight as a general person. I will approach the police as a common person,” Sharmistha said.
Sharmistha has also appealed to other women facing similar problems to lodge complaints.
