INTRODUCTION

Women in India are given a position equivalent to the goddess but each day that goddess is being either
physically or mentally harassed, is this the way we treat them? Cyber crime refers to the crime that are
not done in the physical presence of the victim and are done behind the victim with the help of the
online portals. There are various cybercrimes which are prevalent against women in the present
scenario, such as:
1.Online Stalking
2.Photo Morphing
3.Emial Spoofing
4.Cyber Defamation
5.Cyber Pornography
6.Cyber Harassment

PHOTO MORPHING

Photo morphing is a process or a special effect through which an image or a photo can be substantially
or completely edited so as to make it look different to the viewer. Although it is not a crime in itself but
this technique is often misused by the criminals who obtain/download the pictures of women from social
networking websites such as Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat etc and edit the original pictures of women
to make it looks obscene and then use the distorted pictures for obtaining sexual or financial favours by
blackmailing them and sometimes they even upload those pictures on porn sites to satisfy their sexual
fantasies.

In a recent case of State vs Madachirayil Gopinathan Suni, the accused had sent obscene and threatening
emails from his email IDs, together with a morphed/obscene photograph of the complainant and sought
sexual favours from her and threatened to send the said photograph to her husband in case of her refusal.
The accused had in fact uploaded the said morphed obscene photograph on the homepage of a website
which in all relevant circumstances could be seen by the general public, intending to insult her modesty.

In Nandita Chaudhary vs State, the accused was an employee of the complainant who was terminated
from his service due to his dubious character. The accused harassed and intimated the complainant by
saying that he had some indecent photos of her and would circulate them. He, as a matter of fact,
circulated the morphed/indecent photos among the whole industry in which the complainant worked.

There are several other cases where women have been made an easy target of this cybercrime. Women’s
honour is piously preserved in our Indian society which makes them vulnerable to this crime. Many a
time woman bend before the wrongdoer’s demands to preserve her honour and do not even file a
complaint.

Although there exist certain provisions related to this cybercrime, for example, section 509 of the IPC
which provides for punishment for insulting the modesty of a woman, 507, 506 of the IPC which
provides for punishment for criminal intimidation, section 292 which provides for punishment for
circulation of obscene material, Section 67 of the Information Technology Act which provides for the
punishment for publishing or transmitting obscene material in electronic form, but in our view more
stringent measures must be taken with the view to stop this crime.
CYBER DEFAMATION

Defamation is a tort as well as a crime that harms a person’s reputation, decreases the respect, regard
and confidence of that person through intentional false communication which may be either written or
spoken. It is an intentional infringement of another person’s right of his good name. Cyber defamation is
not a specific criminal offence or a tort but rather defamation through digital means especially the
internet. There are 2 types of defamation: libel i.e. in written form and slander i.e. in oral
form/statement. However cyber defamation is in the form of libel only since all the information is
communicated through some media and is published somewhere. Often women are made victims of
cyber defamation through the circulation of offensive, derogatory, obscene content against the women
by wrongdoers either for taking revenge or for reasons best known to them.

There are several cases where women have been made victims of this crime. One such case was State of
T. N v. Suhas Katti, where the accused posted a defamatory, obscene, annoying message about the
divorced woman in Yahoo Message Group. He did so because the woman rejected his marriage proposal
twice.

One of the factors which encourage this crime is the low cost of the internet. Internet is the cheapest
means of communication where anything can be published with a single click. These types of crimes are
many times not reported to the police as women fear that their marital relations may be affected or even
be strained. Not only that, it is capable of creating both psychological and sociological impact upon a
woman.
Although the term ‘cyber defamation’ itself is unknown to I.T. Act, 2000, but section 499, 500 of the
IPC prescribes the punishment for defamation and section 4 of the IT Act recognizes electronic records,
therefore both the sections read together bridges the gap and provides relief to the victims of cyber
defamation.

Nonetheless, we need something concrete for women’s protection. Therefore, the need of the hour is
that the government should take a brave task of analyzing such crime, which is at the threshold & come
up with recommendations in order to equip the existing legal machinery against such offence.

SEXTORTION

Sextortion is a word made of 2 words sex and extortion. Sextortion refers to asking for sexual favours
against one’s will and it is a non-physical form of coercion. It is a kind of blackmailing the person to
provide the sexual images of herself or he or she will leak certain confidential information from your
electronic devices that they have obtained via hacking into the victim’s device. Online perpetrators
might try to gain the trust of the victim by pretending to be someone who they are not. The blacking
mailing is done by using devices which are difficult to be traced.

Human being is the one is smart enough to create trust in themselves and also is one who trusts anyone
easily. Once the trust is formed in a person the person starts sharing all her information be it her life
problem to sharing our bodies or intimate pictures and later on the other person makes use of all the
information gathered about her to blackmail her to provide sexual favours or else he will release the
confidential information on the social media sites.
For a long time, the people in authority have wrongly used the power conferred to them and have
misused the same. When that abuse of power takes the form of a demand for sexual favours, the
International Association of Women’s Judges (IAWJ) names it ‘sextortion.’ The word is popularly used
in the context of cyber-crime. One such incident of sextortion is casting couch in the film industry.

Here are the things one should not do to be a victim of sextortion:

1. Never send compromising images of yourself to anyone no matter who they are or who are
pretending to be.
2. Do not open your attachments to the strangers.
3. Always turn off your devices when not using them.

Other than just the individual taking certain steps it is also the obligation of the various organs to take
the needful steps to curb this crime. The government must understand the obstacles, opportunities and
also assess the existing laws to see the level of their effectiveness. The government must run sensitive
training courses. Also, there needs to be an incorporation of international law and make the existing
laws more stringent and effective. The legal framework must be modified and women must be made
aware of the rising level of cybercrime and tell them how to prevent these situations and if ever stuck in
such a situation then what to do, whom to report in such a situation.

EMAIL SPOOFING

Email Spoofing refers to sending mail to a person via a forged email account, that is the person does not
reveal his real identity. Phishing (sending fraudulent messages that seem to have been generated from an
authentic source) and business email scams are very common these days in order to make money and
leading to a huge financial loss for the other person.
Women are on an increasing rate victim of Email spoofing, the cybercriminal tend to attack the most
significant habit of women. We often see that women are more attracted by the offers or sale or discount
going on. These cybercriminals often generate false links and send them via ale to the women as they
get attracted and open the link after giving their details it makes lead to the opening of a pop-up window
or a phony scam site. Through these email mail and opening of the link, they are successful in obtaining
one’s personal information.
Recently three was a fake chain email of Netflix where it was written get a 1-year free account on
Netflix and when a person opens up the link and fills in all the details the cybercriminal is able to extract
all the information he wants.
Another form of email spoofing is sending threatening emails where a person is compelled to be shown
that his security has been compromised and the email sent would say “If you don’t respond to this mail
your account will be closed”. In these cases, the person gets scared and gives all the information that has
been asked from him and the cybercriminals are successful in fooling them and extracting information.

In order to avoid all these cases, one must take the following steps:
1. Always crosscheck the URL in a browser
2. Check for the misspelled URL
3. Never respond to those emails that ask for your personal information

CONCLUSION
Hereby it can be concluded that the cybercrimes against women are on the rise and every day there is a
case reported of crime against women. It’s a high time now that some serious and concrete steps should
be taken to curb these ever-rising crimes against women. Women in the present time need to be more
vigilant and also, they should be some steps to be taken by the cyber portals. Merely laying sown the
rules and rights are not enough but they must also be implemented properly. The government must
conduct various workshops or seminars for the awareness about these crimes and what steps can be
taken to eliminate them and if ever a woman is struck in such a situation what must be done by her.
Inform them about the safety helpline number if there is any or how to access the portals that have been
established. Thus Cybercrime against women is day by day becoming grave and in time this rising
problem needs to be solved or else many will have to pay for it.