When Shradha Singh created an Instagram reel alongside two Rapid Action Force personnel in Connaught Place, she had no idea the seven-second clip would be weaponised against her.

The 23-year-old content creator and yoga instructor from Madhya Pradesh was part of the growing crowd of young people who converged on New Delhi's Jantar Mantar protest site in the third week of July to express anger against question paper leaks. Like many others, Singh had seen the Indian public examinations system up close and had grown disillusioned with it. This prompted her to turn up to support the protesting students.

Today, she cannot step outside her home.

Her ordeal is part of a chilling new reality unfolding for young protesters in the capital. Their open – and sometimes abusive – challenge to Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the Bharatiya Janata Party has made them the targets of relentless harassment from both online mobs as well as the police.

“There is no limit to the death threats and rape threats that I’ve been receiving,” Singh told Scroll. “They’ve even found the Instagram accounts of my mother and my friends, who are being abused and badgered to share my whereabouts.”

In an Instagram reel posted on July 25, Singh drew from the soundtrack of a popular advertisement for a line of cleaning products. When the narrator announces “blue is for the toilet”, Singh gestures to blue-clad Rapid Action Force personnel. When the audio track said “red is for the bathroom”, she points to her own red t-shirt.

“I uploaded it purely for entertainment and not to show disrespect to the armed forces,” Singh said.

Within hours, anonymous meme pages reshared the video, claiming that Singh had abused the armed forces. The next day, major news channels such as News18 India and Doordarshan broadcast the reel and criticised her for her “objectionable” content.

“The captions of several videos reproducing my reel are saying that I made abusive remarks, which I did not,” Singh said.

The consequences were immediate and terrifying. BJP supporters spotted the number plate of her car in an older post on her Instagram account and used it to track down her mobile number and address.

“Some called and said, ‘we will kill you the moment we meet you, we will rape you,’” Singh recounted.

The 23-year-old noted a pattern among her attackers: most of the abusive accounts had zero posts and zero followers, hallmarks of coordinated troll farms. “The rest were genuine users who were swayed by these accounts,” she said.

Singh even pleaded with one Instagram meme page administrator to remove a misleading video he had posted on her. He declined. "He said I won’t because I’m making money from it,” she said.

Far from helping, even Instagram seems to be attacking her for her role in the protests. So far, the Meta-owned social media network has removed 33 of Singh’s posts documenting the protests. She said that it offered her no avenue for appeal.

Late night on Friday, Prime Minister Modi himself addressed the abuse directed at him. “Some naughty children have used dirty swear words,” he said in a reel on Instagram, going on to say that the “children” who have abused him were his own and he would show them the “right way”.

‘Anything against Modi is against India’

The harassment of protesters has gone beyond Instagram. Another protester, Ruchika Singh, 15, is facing the wrath of the criminal justice system. Several videos from Jantar Mantar show her using expletives as she talks about Prime Minister Modi – just like countless other protesters did.

As her videos gained traction, dozens of BJP supporters on Twitter and Instagram began to target her. “Please take strict action against this cheap girl who is making very cheap and insulting comments against the Prime Minister of India,” said one Twitter user, sharing screenshots of her Instagram ID and alleging that she had a Muslim partner.

Said another tweet with more than a million impressions, “Arrest her or I will never vote for BJP.”

These posts had several abusive and sexually-coloured comments about Ruchika Singh.

Several others shared the address of her purported workplace, a phone number and the names of her family members. Her photo was used on an AI-generated “Most Wanted” poster.

Scroll was unable to contact Singh. A friend of hers declined to speak, citing fears of online abuse.

Online to physical intimidation

On July 29, Smriti Singh, the Ghaziabad district president of the Jansatta Dal (Loktantrik) women's wing, filed six first information reports in Noida against Ruchika Singh for these videos. One of them was a zero FIR, which allows the investigation to be transferred to the Parliament Street police station under the Delhi Police.

Smriti Singh told Scroll that Ruchika Singh had not only defamed the prime minister but also the country. “Anything against Modi is against India,” she said.

In the FIRs, Ruchika Singh has been charged with sections 352, 353(1) and 356(1) of the new penal code: intentional insult to provoke breach of peace, statements conducing to public mischief and defamation.

The Cockroach Janata Party has defended Ruchika Singh. On July 30, spokesperson Saurav Das said that one could condemn abusive language in a protest, but the use of “criminal justice machinery to target and harass them through the police is absolutely unjustifiable.”

The next day, Ratna Singh, another Cockroach Janata Party spokesperson, tweeted that lawyers were looking into Ruchika Singh’s case. “I have also been assured that no punitive action will be taken against her,” the spokesperson said. “We are now awaiting official confirmation.”

The legal action was coupled with physical intimidation. Smriti Singh said that on July 29, she had visited Ruchika Singh’s Noida address with several people. Finding the family absent, they made a neighbour phone the young woman.

“I asked her to make a video apologising for her language but she refused,” said Smriti Singh, claiming that the young protester was “very ill-mannered” for standing her ground.

Smriti Singh, an advocate practicing at the Supreme Court, said she filed the FIR to make an example out of the young woman. “It will make sure that other kids don’t do this,” she said, adding that she intends to file more complaints if she identifies other protesters who abuse Modi.

On July 31, an editor at CNN News18 released a video of Ruchika Singh apologising to Modi. She said that during the protest, she had met others who were abusing Modi in Delhi’s Connaught Place. “I came under their influence and said a lot of things,” she said, her hands folded in apology. “This is my first and last mistake. I will never do anything like this.”

Flawed legal action

Shahrukh Alam, a constitutional lawyer and Supreme Court advocate, told Scroll that the legal provisions invoked in the FIR are flawed. The mention of section 352 of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, which deals with insulting a person and provoking him to breach public peace, is “most inappropriate”, said Alam – it implies that Ruchika Singh’s comments would provoke the prime minister to break public peace.

Section 353 deals with "fear and alarm" arising out of a statement, rumour, or report, which carries the false presumption of truth.

“Ruchika’s statement is a lampoon and does not presume to be the truth,” the lawyer said. “It is evidently an exaggeration, a caricature, and a mockery of a public figure.”

Alam added” “A false statement is different from mocking a public figure. Her remarks might be abusive, but it conveys an opinion, a radical dislike even. I don't quite see how it would incite a mutiny in the armed forces, or even turn any class or community against any other class or community, which is the requirement under Section 353(1).”

Lastly, the lawyer said that the police cannot invoke section 356, or defamation. “Whoever feels defamed has to file a private complaint before a judicial magistrate,” Alam said. “The police cannot invoke this section in an FIR.”

In this case, Modi should have filed the defamation complaint himself since Ruchika Singh’s statements were directed at him.

New targets

After news of Smriti Singh’s FIR became public on July 30, BJP members and supporters began finding new targets online. Shashi Kumar, who describes himself as a co-convenor of BJP’s social media team in Uttar Pradesh, shared a video of three women from the protest using expletives. “Now let's make these three girls famous,” he wrote. “Identify them and file an FIR. No apology should be accepted.”

One of these women, Ruchika Chawla, took to Instagram on July 30 and defended her comments in the video. “Sometimes the public gets frustrated,” she said. “We have the right and responsibility to criticise the ruling government. I admit that I shouldn’t have been abused…I didn’t personally target anyone…But to target me with abuses…those people should use their brains a little bit.”

Chawla concluded her video with an appeal to viewers to not abuse her family members.

For Shradha Singh, the past few days have been traumatic. A former National Cadet Corps cadet with a master’s degree from a college in Delhi, she now fears the social repercussions from the Rajput community in her home village. “Villagers will tell my parents, ‘See, this is what happens when you give her freedom,’” she said. “They will make potshots at my mother.”

Despite the distress, which has left her with little strength to respond to countless requests for television interviews, she remains firm on one point. “I regret making the video on RAF but not about going to the protest,” said Singh.

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