President Pranab Mukherjee’s daughter and spokesperson of Delhi Congress Sharmishtha Mukherjee claimed on Saturday that a man harassed her by sending lewd messages and put up screenshots of the texts on her Facebook page.
“This pervert Partha Mandal is sending me dirty sexual messages. My 1st reaction was to ignore & block him. But then I thought the silence wud encourage him to find other victims. Just blocking & reporting is not enough. I strongly feel such ppl shd be publicly exposed & humiliated. I’m posting screenshots of his profile & messages he sent me. I’m also tagging him. Pls share this post & tag this rat as a msg that these pervert acts will not be taken lightly,” she wrote on her Facebook wall page.
Also, she lodged a complaint with the Cyber Crime unit of the Delhi Police’s Economic Offences Wing (EoW). “We are in the process of registering a case and launching investigation to catch the culprit,” said Anyesh Roy, DCP (Cyber Crime). Police said the “lewd” messages were sent to the complainant through Facebook Messenger.
Her post went viral on Facebook and many users appreciated Mukherjee for giving out a strong message to her harasser, who in his profile has claimed to be a resident of Nauhati in Hooghly, West Bengal.
Mukherjee told The Pioneer, “First I thought of blocking or ignoring him. Then I thought why should I feel ashamed of sharing such posts because I am not guilty. Such people will take advantage of silence. That’s why I chose to speak up.”
“U belong to royal family. U r the daughter of Hon’ble President of our Nation. U r the encouraging factor for other women of our Nation too. U have done a courageous and praiseworthy job,” wrote one user.
The Congress leader, who fought the 2015 Assembly elections from Greater Kailash constituency in South Delhi, but lost, said she chose to speak up as she thought silence would “encourage him to find other victims”.
Sharmishtha said she wanted police to take up her case as any complaint and she doesn’t want any preferential treatment. “Police might have thousands of such cases with them. I will fight as an ordinary woman and do not require any preferential treatment as a daughter of the President of India. Police must work all such cases will equal diligence,” she said.
“Thousands of women are facing this everyday through social media platform like Facebook and Twitter. The whole idea is to shame this man and punish him, she said. Also, Sharmistha appealed to women facing similar problems to lodge complaints.