How does a journalist report in Modi's India?
On the 8th of November at around 1.20 am in the night when I was deep in sleep, my niece woke me up to the incessant ringing of the phone. "Something is wrong" she said as she handed over the phone to me. It felt like an avalanche had hit my android phone. Video calls, voice calls, text messages, data calls, whats app messages, my phone was on fire. As I stared at the phone the messages kept rolling, one of them said "Your number has been leaked". I reached out for the beta blocker on my side table to aid the palpitation and asked my niece to wake up my mother. There were password and one time verification codes from home loan companies, banks, matrimonial websites, porn website registration requests, online shopping, and real estate projects. The messages ranged from sexually explicit to death threats to just pure intrigue. Each time I would disconnect a voice call, a whats app video call request would pop up.
A friend texted me that a right wing twitter handle 'HinduphobiaWatch' (@hinduphobiawatch) had doxxed me and asked people to send me links to horror films. Multiple right-wing handles took sadistic pleasure and replied to the Twitter handle saying that they were doing the needful, others asked if they could ask me for midnight services on the call. A friend messages me an archived link to the tweet to complain to the police in case the Twitter handle later deleted the account. I switched off my phone. What else could they have accessed, it was my official number that had been doxxed. I immediately reported the doxxing to twitter and got a response from them that they would look into the matter on priority. Till today I have not heard from twitter.
The next day I went to the cyber crime department at the Bandra Worli Complex in western Mumbai. The cops first said that the complaint did not fall in their jurisdiction and then grudgingly took a complaint with no commitment to register an offence. The following day I went to the police station close to my house. I sat for about eleven hours, giving details of the calls, the messages, the obnoxious images, the rape and death threats to me and my family. As I sat with the police officers, the calls and texts continued to drop on my phone. Meanwhile, one
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