When tech facilitates digital violence against women by those close to them

Mumbai: When 34-year-old Sia started receiving sexually explicit messages from multiple numbers on her mobile phone, she didn't realise until the police intervened that she was a victim of doxxing. Her estranged husband posted her name, phone number, and address on a porn site.Twenty-year-old Sujata, a rape survivor from Pune, slashed her wrists in front of an upmarket residential building in Bandra two weeks ago. A male resident of the building befriended her on a dating app, forced her to have sex after promising marriage (and threatening to burn her with lit cigarettes), and then ghosted her. Counsellors from the Dilaasa centre in BMC-run Bhabha Hospital, where the Nirmal Nagar police took Sujata, realised she wasn't just a heartbroken girl but a victim of crime. The man didn't give his real name, age, or marital status on the famous dating app.Sia and Sujata (names changed) might seem like many other cybercrime victims, but public health experts now choose a more appropriate label: Survivors of technology-facilitated abuse in intimate relationships. They have, in other words, suffered digital violence. Considering one in every three women over 15 years of age suffers from violence—along with the physical and mental health scars—there would be millions of sufferers of digital violence too, but awareness about it is low, and the legal and health definitions are still being formulated.Recognising Digi-ViolenceSenior counsellor Mrudula Sawant with Dilaasa crisis intervention department at Bhabha Hospital said most cases of domestic digital violence are too subtle to reach the police or counsellors. For instance, she said, a husband who checks his wife's texts, tracks her location 24x7, and questions her about old social media pictures with male friends.There are other cases where women pay ransom to avoid false information about them from spreading on social media. According to the latest Maharashtra State Cyber Cell data, scammers extorted Rs 41 crore by blackmailing women they stalked in the cyberworld in the last 22 months.Between Jan 2020 and Oct 2025, a total of 1,085 women fell victim to cyberstalking or sexting in Maharashtra, with scammers siphoning Rs 51.1 crore. The police recovered Rs 1.24 crore from 2020 to 2025 (till October) and froze Rs 2.4 crore in the same period.Victims in MumbaiAccording to Anirudh Narayanan from CEHAT, which works with the BMC on the Dilaasa intervention centres, counsellors started noticing an increasing trend of digital violence roughly two years ago. "Our helpline has received a few calls, while the intervention centre gets one or two patients every month,'' he said.One of the patients whom counsellor Pradnya Owhal helped was a 17-year-old girl who accepted an Instagram friend request without realising he was an elderly neighbour who had been watching her. Over months, he won her confidence and called her home when his wife wasn't around and raped her. "His wife returned home and started hitting the girl. The girl's mother, too, got violent with her and threatened to stop her from going to college,'' said Owhal, who has been trying to counsel the minor and help her file a case with the police, but her family isn't interested. BMC executive health officer Dr Daksha Shah said when women come to our intervention centres, "we do our best to help them emotionally and with the legal recourse".Senior researcher Pratikshya Priyadarshini said digital violence against women has elements of financial violence as well. "Previously, women could hide their money in a bank, but now the partner links her account to GPay and uses her phone to transfer money to himself,'' she said. Recourse in digital violence, she said, isn't easy as women wouldn't know whom to turn to on a social media site where her details have been doxxed.Why the Increasing TrendApart from cheating women emotionally, many criminals have realised there is money in cyberstalking. "Initially, scammers would seek small sums, but the trend shifted in 2024 and 2025 with Rs 19 crore and Rs 22 crore extorted respectively," said a cyber cop. Deputy Inspector General (State Cyber) Sanjay Shintre said: "Scammers keep a watch on social media posts. They send friend requests and, once the victim accepts it without verification, they access the person's friend list and activities.'' Scammers morph images or make fake porn videos to extort money. Women who visit social media sites for products are easy targets, he said. Former IPS officer-turned-lawyer Y P Singh said due to greater vigilance by the police and installation of CCTV cameras, physical stalking is risky. "The best is to ignore a stranger's friend request. Stalkers use various means to either befriend a woman. They may seek intimacy or use morphing techniques to create objectionable images and blackmail women," he said.

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