Cybercrimes Against Women In India: Legal Gaps And Emerging Challenges
- IJLLR Journal
- 2 hours ago
- 1 min read
Rajeev Kumar Singh, Indian Institute of Management, Rohtak
Introduction
The digital revolution has transformed India into one of the largest online populations in the world, significantly altering the access to education, unemployment, communication and self-expression. In the case of women, the internet has provided a new path to learning, to participating in the economy and digital visibility and as a result, they have gained more independence and can now participate more actively in public discourse. This growing digital footprint has provided unprecedented opportunities for empowerment. Simultaneously, it has subjected women to new and deeply concerning forms of vulnerability, rendering online spaces more unsafe.
Over the past few years, cybercrimes committed against women have been on an unsettling rising trend indicating the persistence of gender-based violence in online space. Cyberstalking, cyberbullying, online harassment, revenge pornography, sextortion and the non-consensual sharing of intimate images have become widespread types of abuse. The artificial intelligence-based technologies, especially the deepfake technology have escalated these harms by facilitating the creation and distribution of fabricated sexually explicit content without authorization. These acts extend beyond violation of privacy and lead to abject emotional, social, and reputational harm. The crimes are the contemporary instances of misogyny which undermines the dignity and agency of women in the digital environments.
The magnitude of the issue is reflected in the official statistics. In 2023, India registered more than 4.48 lakh incidences of crimes against women and reported incidents of cybercrime were up by almost 31 percent to about 86,000 cases all over the country.
