New Delhi: A Public Interest Litigation has been filed in the Delhi High Court seeking direction for a Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) probe in the case relating to an Instagram chat group “Bois Locker Room” where rapes were glorified and photos of underage girls were shared and also objectified.
The plea filed by Dev Ashish Dubey stated that a CBI or SIT probe is required in the matter as the students involved in this incident belong to “influential families” and can hamper the investigation by the local police.
“…the entire issue needs to be investigated by the SIT or CBI as these students belongs to high profile families and there is an apprehension that the investigation or enquiry conducted by the local police will be influenced and wrongdoer’s will never be arrested and punished,” the plea said.
The plea is likely to come up for hearing on Wednesday. The plea filed through advocates Dushyant Tiwari and Om Prakash Parihar also sought the court’s direction to the Centre and Delhi government to provide safety to the girls and women who have exposed this heinous crime, so that they cannot be harmed by the members of “Bois Locker Room” group.
The plea further stated that the action of these students shows the mindset of the young generation towards the girls and “if it is not stopped at this time and these people are not punished at this time, it will lead to increase in crimes against the girls and women in the future.”
The petitioner sought that the culprits shall also be punished under the section of the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act, 2012 too because “the crime has been conducted against the minor girls and various group members of the Respondent No. 3 company (Instagram) group are minor.”
“…the group is run by and has membership of 16 to 18-year-old boys from posh schools in South Delhi, all of whom were involved in the objectification of their classmates and other women, some as young as 14.
“The expletive-laden chats show the boys discussing having physical relationship with their classmates as well as rating them on a scale of beauty vs the size of their breasts and how the latter makes up for any supposed deficiency in the former criteria.
“Another bunch of messages has the members sharing photos of teenage girls and making others guess the age,” the petitioner claimed.
Dubey states that when the leaked screenshots of the group chats went viral and people were outraged by such behavior, many of the users of the group allegedly deactivated their social media profiles and “also allegedly threatened to leak nude photos and hack accounts of the women who had outed them”.
One of the post states that “Let’s post nude photos of all girls who posted stories about us. I have photos of some of them. Now they will know the result of these shenanigans. They will shut their mouth. They want to be feminists na… they will not be able to show their face in public”, the plea stated.
Leaked screenshots of the private Instagram chat group stirred up a storm after numerous boys were allegedly seen sharing photos of underage girls, objectifying them, and allegedly planning ‘gang rapes’.
The chatroom, exposed on Sunday by a girl targeted in the group chats, has drawn massive anger, shock and disgust on social media. Class 11 and 12 students casually discussed “gang-raping” girls, sexualized and slut-shamed them in screenshots of chats that have gone viral on Twitter and other social media forums.
(IANS)
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