
There is an army of trolls on the microblogging website Twitter and often the communication gets really nasty. On April 30, journalist Rajdeep Sardesai deleted his Twitter account after allegedly abusive direct messages (DM) were sent from his handle.
“There has been a campaign of abuse in last one week and it has been extremely personal, and apparently DMs have been sent from my account which I haven’t sent so I have informed Twitter about it. I have temporarily disabled the account till they sort out the issue and tell me what has to be done. If a police complaint has to be filed, it will be filed. Anyways this is a good break,” Sardesai told IndianExpress.com.
@Atheist_Krishna just see what reply he sent pic.twitter.com/DX8NfIehfX
— Khawaish (@tweetermedia) April 29, 2016
Sardesai who has always been very active on Twitter, was accused of making statements like “Go ask your mother.” As the word spread, a few others put screenshots of profane messages sent from his account.
@shilpitewari @BDUTT @sardesairajdeep I got this DM , I can’t reply coz i follow u and u don’t follow me. AC hacked? pic.twitter.com/yP7xMTdrC4
— Kaustubh (@kaustubhsumbre) April 29, 2016
However, the journalist wrote in his last tweet that his account was hacked. His last tweet read, “How low will some people now stoop? Hack my account? Put out false messages? When will this end? Time to disable account. Enough is enough.”
His wife, journalist Sagarika Ghose took to Twitter to share her disappointment.
An utterly insane campaign of abuse against journalists, many a/cs even followed by ministers & @PMOIndia. shocking https://t.co/6ZfckNSTVS
— Sagarika Ghose (@sagarikaghose) April 30, 2016
In 2015, journalist Ravish Kumar also quit Twitter because of the prevalent environment online, of abusing and trolling. “Why is it that all online abusers on Twitter have the same profile? Whenever I have bothered to check, the abuser has a profile proudly claiming that he’s a Sanghi, there is either a photo of Narendra Modi or that of Lord Rama with a bow, there is talk of “Hindu Gaurav”. Now taking pride in your religion is great – but is abusing, spreading rumours, heaping baseless allegations “gaurav”?” he told Scroll.