Even as the Delhi police cracked down on the ‘Bois Locker Room’, an Instagram page where teenage boys were allegedly discussing gangrape of minor girls, cyber experts have observed scores of ‘copycat’ groups with similar names or themes that were formed within hours of the matter becoming public knowledge.
Cyber experts said the copycat groups were trying to capitalise on the dubious fame and gain followers.
Mumbai-based expert Shubam Singh told The Hindu that from Monday night to Tuesday morning, he had confirmed the details of eight members of the Instagram group and shared them with the Delhi police.
“Even as I was working on this, I saw several such pages, some of them newly formed, on Instagram. The pages were created with the obvious intent to cash in on the attention and gain followers. As news of the incident spread, those who did not know about it started searching online and in the process came across these pages and started following them,” Mr. Singh said.
Rumour-mongering
He added that another fallout of the matter was the rumour-mongering that started either to take focus away from the core issue or to malign others in a similar way with fabricated evidence. Supposed screenshots of chats from a Delhi-based group where members ostensibly admitted to having taken advantage of a girl started doing the rounds on Twitter on Monday evening, but could not be verified.
“There were also reports of one of the members of the Bois Locker Room committing suicide on Monday night, which I later confirmed to be false,” Mr. Singh said, who has received calls from several people to discuss cyber crime.
Ritesh Bhatia, another expert, has also been besieged with calls from people seeking to report similar pages.
“The major problem is that there are no clear laws for many of the instances that are coming to light. For example, there are so many instances of body shaming but no laws that deal with cyber bullying. If people have no fear of the law, such incidents will continue,” Mr. Bhatia said. He referred to a similar case that had come to light in a Mumbai-based school last year, where there was ultimately no police case, nor were there any steps taken by other schools to spread awareness. He added that responsibility also lay with parents, who need to make children aware that such behaviour can attract serious consequences.
“Today, instances of people breaking traffic laws are decreasing not because they have suddenly developed respect for the law but because there are speed cameras, e-challans and increased fines. It works the same way with cyber crime,” Mr. Bhatia said.
