Cyber Harassment And Online Abuse Against Non-Binary Persons: Legal Challenges In India
- IJLLR Journal
- Jul 19
- 1 min read
Ms. Srishti Pandey, School of Legal Studies, Babu Banarasi Das University, Lucknow
Dr. Vatsla Sharma, School of Legal Studies, Babu Banarasi Das University, Lucknow
ABSTRACT
The digital public sphere has turned into a sphere of proportional violence when it comes to non-binary persons in India, that is, individuals whose gender identity surpasses or rejects the binary definitions of man and woman. Cyberstalking, identity-based harassment, nonconsensual disclosure of gender identity (under Indian law), sustained coordinated pile-ons are a unique ecology of online abuse that intersects with the lack of legal recognition of non-binary identities under Indian law. The Information Technology Act, 2000 (with amendments in 2008) the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, 2023, and the Transgender Persons (Protection of Rights) Act, 2019, together form an archipelago of potentially relevant provisions; however, none of them was designed with non-binary persons in mind, and the cumulative coverage that they offer is patchy, uneven, and often unavailable.
This article holds the view that the invisibility of non-binary persons in the legal architecture of India, a creation of the binary gender assumptions embedded in the enumerated grounds of non-discrimination, the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, and the offence structure of the IT Act, turns each instance of cyber harassment into a compounded injury: the original harm of the maltreatment and the secondary harm of legal abandonment. Based on constitutional theory, a comparative legal approach (Canada, the European Union and New Zealand), and a critical reading of the available jurisprudence, the article suggests a series of legislative and judicial reforms aimed at making non-binary persons legally visible and legally protected in the online realm.
