Cyber Crimes Against Women: Legal Challenges And Regulatory Responses In The Digital Age
- IJLLR Journal
- 27 minutes ago
- 1 min read
Baby Zoengpuii, LL.M., The ICFAI University, Dehradun
Prof. (Dr.) Arun Kumar Singh, The ICFAI University, Dehradun
ABSTRACT
The proliferation of digital technologies has engendered a distinct and alarming category of gender-based violence: cybercrimes against women. This paper undertakes a comprehensive doctrinal and analytical examination of the legal framework governing such offences in India, situating it within the broader constitutional architecture of equality, dignity, and privacy. It surveys the principal forms of cyber abuse-including cyber stalking, revenge pornography, morphed and deepfake imagery, sextortion, doxxing, identity theft, and AI-enabled synthetic media harms-before critically analysing the statutory responses embodied in the Information Technology Act, 2000, the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, 2023, the Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023, and ancillary legislation. The paper evaluates landmark judicial pronouncements, from Shreya Singhal v. Union of India (2015) to Justice K.S. Puttaswamy v. Union of India (2017), assessing how constitutional values of free speech and informational privacy are being calibrated in the digital domain. It further diagnoses systemic enforcement failures- underreporting, forensic deficiencies, jurisdictional ambiguities, and intersectional vulnerabilities affecting Dalit, tribal, LGBTQ+, and rural women-and benchmarks Indian law against the European Union's Digital Services Act, the United Kingdom's Online Safety Act 2023, and Australia's eSafety Commissioner model. The paper concludes with targeted legislative and institutional reform recommendations oriented towards a preventive rather than merely reactive regulatory paradigm.
Keywords: Cyber crimes, women, digital violence, Information Technology Act, Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, deepfakes, revenge pornography, intermediary liability, constitutional rights, data protection, CERT-In, comparative law.
