New Delhi: The Delhi Commission for Women (DCW) Monday sent a notice to Instagram and the police, asking for an inquiry into a private chat group called ‘Bois Locker Room’, after members were found sharing objectionable pictures of underage girls, objectifying them, and planning ‘gang rapes‘.
‘Bois Locker Room’, allegedly involving a group of teenage boys from Delhi schools, created a storm on social media Sunday when Instagram user Niska Nagpal leaked chats from the group, including obscene images of around 15-16 girls.
The DCW’s notice said it had received several screenshots of the private chat group.
“This commission has received a number of screenshots related to this group which are extremely objectionable and explicitly mention rape threats to even minor girls. Members of this group also have personal information about these minor girls,” the DCW’s notice read.
The commission also asked Instagram to share important information such as user IDs and locations of each group member, and its administrators.
Details of some of the group members’ accounts were also shared by Nagpal, who has around 45,000 followers on Instagram.
Bhishma Singh, DCP, crime branch, told ThePrint: “We have taken cognisance of the matter and registered a complaint in this regard. Because no girl has come forward to register an FIR, we have initiated an inquiry. We cannot confirm the age group of the boys because we aren’t sure. We have asked Instagram to provide us the necessary information.”
The controversy
The controversy flared after several social media users followed Nagpal’s lead and posted screenshots of the leaked chats on Instagram and Twitter. On Sunday, the hashtag #boyslockerroom was retweeted over 30,000 times.
Thread: Students who are 16, 17 years old, are casually talking of gang raping girls and women, swapping nudes without the consent of these women on Reddit, with not even a hint of fear of exposure. The dire crisis of rape womxn face, starts with this rape culture #boyslockerroom
— #MeTooIndia (@IndiaMeToo) May 4, 2020
On 4 March, another account was created by the name of ‘Bois Locker Room 2.0’ but it was deleted later. Nagpal had earlier also leaked chats from another Instagram group, called ‘Jai ka shirt skrt gang’, that was found talking about ‘raping girls’.
Child rights body also takes notice
Priyank Kanoongo, chairperson of the National Commission for Protection of Child Rights, told ThePrint (NCPCR), “We have taken cognisance of this matter. A detailed report is being prepared regarding this, which will be sent to Instagram soon.”
On 29 April, the NCPCR had taken cognisance of pornographic videos of a child being circulated and said strict action would be taken against the perpetrators.
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