Shaheen and Alia Bhatt

After actor Sushant Singh Rajput committed suicide on June 14, a number of celebrities have been trolled and bullied targeted online by fans in anger or over a debate on nepotism. More often than not, this bullying has taken an ugly turn. Actress Alia Bhatts sister Shaheen has revealed that she received rape and death threats after Sushants death.

Sharing screenshots of the hateful messages, she has been receiving after actor Sushants suicide, Shaheen wrote on her Instagram story wrote, Does this surprise you? Why? It doesn’t surprise me.

Through a seven page story, Shaheen expressed her concerns about safety of the women in India. She wrote India is considered the world’s most dangerous country for sexual violence against women. Rape is one of the most common crimes in India. A woman is raped every 15 minutes. In India, 70% of women are victims of domestic violence. Every 9 minutes an act of cruelty is committed by a husband or a relative of the husband. Every third woman suffers sexual or physical violence at home. Also, The Global Youth Online Behaviour Survey conducted by Microsoft ranked India third in cyberbullying, with 53% of the respondents, mainly children admitting to have experienced online bullying. About 800,000 people die by suicide worldwide every year, of these 135,000 (17%) are residents of India.

Because what better way to render a woman powerless than to make her ashamed of being a woman. Ashamed of being herself. Because if she weren’t a woman would she still be debased, humiliated and threatened with violence and violation every day? Would she so casually be robbed of her security and sense of agency

You see. It’s genius. You abuse her. Yet, you try to convince her the problem is her. Not you.

And somehow everyone is surprised that a woman is raped every 15 minutes in India. Really? Why? I’m not. But like Hannah Gadsby says, To be rendered powerless does not destroy your humanity. Your resilience is your humanity. The only people who lose their humanity are those who believe they have the right to render another human being powerless. They are the weak.

I wondered for days whether or not this was something I should address. I debated whether it was worth the effort it would take because ugh, why waste time and even 1% of mental processor power on this.

But then I realised, if I believe that the world should be a place in which women can feel safe and exist without being constantly threatened, sexualised or subjected sexist/misogynistic slurs with the sole intent to humiliate them – if I believe women should be treated like HUMANS.

Then that’s a world I have to help create.

And in order to create that world I have to draw boundaries in my own life and pursue action no matter how annoying or time consuming or downright sad it is.

Shaheen later warned the senders that if the bullying continued she will report them and take legal actions against them in the accord.

Shaheen also blamed Instagram policies of zero tolerance of being inactive during such situation. To @INSTAGRAM – you have zero tolerance policies for a lot of the content that people put up on your platform – I think it’s fair to say that misogynistic slurs, intended to subdue and oppress *should* fall under the umbrella of your zero tolerance community guidelines. “But if you don’t want to receive abusive message turn off your message requests”. “Tired of being called a bitch in your comments Turn off your comments.Asking me to change the way I use a platform because of someone else’s hatred and misogyny is the equivalent of telling me that if I go out at night and get assaulted “I was asking for it”.I should not have to change the way I use a platform if someone is being abusive. They should. Full stop.