Girija Oak’s AI-morphed photos yet another example of how India’s online spaces are failing women

Marathi actor Girija Oak found herself going viral recently because of funny comments she made during a YouTube interview, in which she had donned an elegant blue sari. Within days, along with the fame and compliments to her beauty and grace, came AI-morphed photos that “sexualised and objectified” her, leading her to put out an appeal on Instagram urging people to “please think twice” before creating or clicking on such content.

We like to believe the internet is a place where women can express themselves freely, find community and build careers on their own terms. But for many women and LGBTQI+ people in India, that digital promise is cracking. A new report by Breakthrough and Equality Now reveals how online spaces have become sites of intimidation, harassment and gendered control, and how the systems meant to protect survivors are too slow or too indifferent to keep up.

The November 2025 report, Experiencing Technology-Facilitated Gender-Based Violence in India: Survivor Narratives and Legal Responses, lays bare the scale of this crisis. Drawing on conversations with survivors across caste, class, tribe, and disability backgrounds, as well as lawyers, cybercrime police, academics, and civil society experts, the report concludes something many of us have long felt but struggled to name: technology is being weaponised against already vulnerable groups, and legal and policy systems haven’t caught up.

“India’s justice system is not equipped to deal with the evolving nature of technology-facilitated gender-based violence (TFGBV),” says Amanda Manyame of Equality Now. “Survivors need stronger laws, swifter justice, greater support, with tech companies taking real responsibility for harms happening on their platforms.”

A continuum of harm – online and offline

The report, which draws on interviews from various locations in India including Delhi, Hyderabad, Kochi, Patna and Trivandrum, shows that abuse doesn’t exist in tidy compartments. What happens online bleeds into the physical world and vice versa. And because digital spaces are vast, anonymous and permanent, the trauma is amplified.

Survivors describe familiar but deeply violating forms of TFGBV: non-consensual intimate images, digitally manipulated photos (such as in Girija Oak’s case), stalking, impersonation through fake accounts, doxing (online sharing of private information), cyberbullying, and mass trolling campaigns. They’re attacked by strangers and by people they know. They’re targeted because they are women, queer, Dalit, tribal, disabled, financially vulnerable or socially isolated.

One Kerala journalist recounted how the online abuse she faced was followed by her phone number being written on the walls of public toilets falsely claiming she was “available” for sex. She got two to three thousand calls daily from strangers, continuously day and night.

Children, too, are vulnerable. A public prosecutor interviewed for the study explains how perpetrators use mobile phones and social media to groom minors, gain their trust and lure them to isolated locations. The assaults are often recorded and used to blackmail them.

“They know how to create a web and trap them,” the prosecutor says, adding that once victims reach the courtroom, gender discrimination continues, with defence lawyers attempting to discredit girls by questioning unrelated aspects of their personal lives.

From filing a complaint to victim-blaming

One of the hardest parts of reporting tech-facilitated abuse is that survivors often have to re-live the trauma. Many withdraw from online life entirely. Others, especially young women, avoid reporting because they fear their families will blame or police them. For LGBTQI+ survivors, the threat of being outed is an added danger.

One survivor says, “He (the police officer) was like, it is your responsibility if you want safety. Block them and if it’s still not working, delete your account and leave.”

The emotional costs – fear, humiliation, career disruption, psychological trauma – are profound. Yet, because victim-blaming remains widespread, TFGBV remains underreported and underestimated.

India’s laws don’t match survivors’ realities

Most of India’s cyberlaws were never designed to address harm to bodies, identities or dignity. The IT Act 2000 focuses on property and data, not the gendered nature of online violence. Further, it has no dedicated provision for online stalking, even though women and LGBTQI+ people face it disproportionately.

Section 66A – which criminalised a broad range of “offensive” online speech and was struck down in 2015 for violating free speech – did curb certain abusive behaviour, but its removal left a vacuum that lawmakers haven’t rushed to fill. As the report notes, India’s justice system often emphasises punishment over survivor support, leaving little room for healing or recovery.

Given the barriers – police inaction, procedural delays, high legal costs and the emotional exhaustion of simply trying to be believed – it’s no surprise that many survivors don’t file complaints at all.

When tech companies look the other way

Perhaps the most frustrating part of this story is that when survivors ask for the most basic thing – please remove this harmful content – tech platforms routinely fail them.

Indian law requires service providers to remove unlawful material within 24 to 36 hours of receiving a valid complaint. But survivors, lawyers, and cyberpolice say that working with platforms like Meta is often “opaque, resource-intensive, inconsistent and ineffective”. Requests for information are frequently refused. Multi-country jurisdictions slow everything down. Even when companies are legally required to help, they seldom do so promptly.

Meanwhile, automated moderation systems don’t understand Indian languages, contexts or cultural nuances. Misogyny isn’t always in English, and the bots don’t catch it.

Without swift takedowns or a clear “right to be forgotten”, survivors are forced to live with the fear that their photos or videos may resurface at any time.

In the absence of empathetic protection by the state, some survivors themselves step forward for others. One lawyer puts it, “A lot of people become activists after the violence happens to them. Where systems fail, they become support systems for others.”

What needs to change

The report suggests that India needs stronger laws and far more survivor-centred systems.

This means:

• Gender-sensitive training for police and judges, including digital literacy
• Stricter and consistently applied cyberlaws
• Better handling of digital evidence
• Real accountability for tech companies
• Feminist strategic litigation to create progressive legal precedents
• Compassionate engagement with survivors so they feel safe, not blamed

Manjusha Madhu from Breakthrough summarises it powerfully: “Every survivor we spoke to shared stories of fear, frustration and resilience. Their experiences show that the systems meant to protect them end up silencing them instead. Survivors want faster responses, compassionate engagement, and solutions that restore their safety and dignity, not more bureaucracy or blame.”

In the current scenario, however, gender-based violence continues to expand its footprint in the virtual world, with perpetrators and platforms enjoying immunity in the face of lax and insensitive governance.

Read the full report here.