Samarth Goyal (HINDUSTAN TIMES; August 26, 2020)

Singer-songwriter Neha Bhasin has filed a complaint with the Mumbai Police’s Cyber Crime branch after she was “trolled, and given rape threats”.

She says, “I waited for a week, tried warning them. But it just kept getting worse. I couldn’t take it. I posted a photo of my father who passed away two years back, and in the comment section, people are threatening me saying I’ll be raped inside my house.”

Last year, Bhasin, after defending rapper-composer Badshah on Twitter, had faced a barrage of abuse “which included many young girls dishing out threats”, by the “so called fans” of (the K-pop sensation) BTS. “I don’t know Badshah personally. But he was being trolled because he said something about buying google ad words. I’d just said that every artiste needs to be respected, and added that I’m not a big fan of K-pop. Since then, for nearly two months I was abused,” says Bhasin.

Now, ever since it was reported that Badshah was questioned by the police about buying fake likes, The BTS Army, as the fans of the South Korean band like to call themselves, bullied Bhasin to apologize for her remarks.

She adds, “They called my managers at 1 am, and told them to ‘keep me in check’. There’s a video on YouTube, where a young boy is openly threatening to rape me.”

Through her complaint, she hopes to achieve two things. She explains, “First, I want people to know that abusing anyone for an opinion you don’t agree with, is a criminal offence. Freedom of speech is not freedom to peddle hate. Secondly, most of them are young kids. It’s really down to their parents to keep them in check.”

Social media platforms, Bhasin says, “say they are against cyber bullying, but they don’t do anything about it. It’s time that they are held accountable too”.