President's daughter Sharmistha exposes Facebook harasser

NEW DELHI: President Pranab Mukherjee's daughter Sharmistha, a Congress member, has exposed a man's bid to sexually harass her on Facebook by posting screenshots of the explicit messages he sent her.

The alleged harasser, whose profile S identifies him as Partha Mandal, used the social networking site's messaging service to send the messages, all in Bengali.

Sharmistha has registered a complaint with Face book, and also filed a complaint with the Delhi Police cyber cell. Police officers said they would register an FIR under the IT Act. In her FB post, shared on Saturday, Sharmistha wrote: “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 en courage him to find other victims... I strongly feel such ppl shd be publicly exposed & humiliated.“

She later told TOI, “It is not just me -thousands of women face similar harassments every day . I don't want the cops to do it (punish the accused) specially for me just because I am the President's daughter. I want to fight against this harassment like any other woman in the country, who cannot approach the police fearing stigma.“

The post got nearly 472 shares in 10 hours, besides nearly 700 comments of support for Sharmistha, who also briefly trended on Twitter.

Police said they would go through his messages and identify the IP address from which they were sent. They have approached FB to seek details about the man.

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