Point of View/YouTube
Point of View/YouTube
Khushboo Khan is the oldest helpline responder at Tech Sakhi. A homemaker once, she was thrilled to find an opportunity in the social sector that allowed her to work remotely. When she first joined in 2021, Khushboo was unfamiliar with many online threats and security concerns. “Before the training process, I didn't even know that it was possible to report someone on Instagram and Facebook,” she recalled.
Now, juggling two daily shifts between 9 and 7, she aptly handles the digital safety concerns of people, mostly women, on the Hindi helpline.
The Need for A Helpline
Launched in 2022 by Point of View, Tech Sakhi is a grassroots, multilingual digital helpline dedicated to addressing digital safety concerns for women and marginalised genders. With more and more people logging on the Internet, it means increasingly real-life hierarchies for women and marginalised groups.
The data around cyber crimes against women, too, is alarming. The 2022 National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) report notes that there was an 11% rise (compared to 2021) in cyber crimes against women. These crimes include sharing and publishing sexually explicit material without consent, blackmail, photo morphing, and impersonating, among others. A total of 6896 cases were filed under section 67 of the IT Act alone, which deals with publication or transmission of obscene and sexually explicit material online.
Each responder at Tech Sakhi handles 10-15 calls daily on an average, with slightly fewer (about 5-6) for newer languages on the helpline like Tamil.
Khushboo and her fellow responders tackle a wide range of online harassment cases — from deepfakes, impersonations to revenge porn. Despite the emotional toll it takes on them, they continue to work towards enabling girls to occupy digital spaces safely and fearlessly. While the nature of the job is unconventional, many women, like Khusboo, found it to be a safe space themselves.
The Rise of Deepfakes
Khushboo recalled repeated calls from a young woman who was being impersonated. This woman kept finding fake accounts posting deepfakes layered with sexually explicit words. She was a community worker and the impersonator was known to her — a man who had previously sought her help under false circumstances. Each time Khushboo helped her in reporting and taking down the account, he would create another one. Despite removing multiple accounts, the harassment persisted.
It is disturbingly easy to create a deepfake — all you need is a person’s photo. In 2017, journalist Samantha Cole uncovered the first set of deepfakes on the internet. A Redditor using the name ‘deepfakes’ was using open-source machine learning tools to morph celebrity faces onto porn videos. Since then, image based sexual abuse has been spiralling out of control, predominantly targeting women. Research by Sensity AI found that AI generated sexual abuse visuals doubled every six months from 2018 to 2020; The Wired reported that with a 54% rise, the production of deepfake pornography in 2023 exceeded that of all previous years combined.
Decode had earlier found that X (formerly Twitter) is full of deepfakes of Indian actresses.
Chayya Rajput, operations head at Tech Sakhi, said that merely taking down the accounts is not enough. “When someone is being impersonated at this scale, maybe a deeper legal investigation is required to identify the perpetrator,” Rajput said.
Handling cases of harassment regularly takes a toll on the respondents too. Khushboo finds this aspect of the job quite challenging. Speaking of the deepfake case, she said that while she could help her caller report and take down the account, she felt there is little one can do about the distress caused by the harassment. “We can't do much to uplift her mental state,” she added.
Women’s Bodies in Cyberspace
Sunita, another Hindi helpline responder, recounted a case of revenge porn. A woman called the helpline after her ex-partner leaked intimate pictures through a fake account. Petrified of how her husband and in-laws might react, the caller was having suicidal thoughts. She mentioned wanting to die 2-3 times during the first 45-minute call.
Women’s bodies are regularly weaponised against them online. In 2004, a two-and-a-half-minute video known as DPS MMS went viral. The blurry video featured a boy and girl engaging in oral sex, filmed and circulated without the girl's knowledge. In 2016, Al Jazeera reported on local shops in north-India selling ‘WhatsApp sex videos’ or ‘local films’, euphemisms for videos of rape.
Photo morphing was also extensively used in a deadly blackmail racket involving instant loan apps. Downloading these apps meant granting them access to sensitive data, including contact lists and gallery photos. People realised their information had been compromised only when they began receiving threatening calls and messages 2-3 days before the repayment was due.
Chhaya recalled a barrage of calls on the helpline from victims of this scam during the lockdown. Morphed photos would be sent to the victim’s own contact list. In one case, Chhaya explained, a man had taken loans under his wife’s identity, which meant that the harassment was directed towards her.
Survivor-centric Legal Approaches
In an attempt to remain survivor-'centric respondents are trained to be non-judgmental. Their focus is to give callers the agency to make their own choices by equipping them with credible information.
In the case Sunita was handling, for instance, her caller was lonely and afraid of going to the police and filing a complaint. The moral panic around women’s bodies and chastity makes ‘revenge porn’ particularly harrowing for victims. There is an acute fear of social death. As the only person who knew what the victim was going through, Sunita had to be a source of motivation. “I had to remind her that this was not the end of the world,” she said.
Filing any kind of harassment complaint is not easy. Many victims choose not to go to the police or take legal action because they lack resources and emotional support.
NS Nappinai, a senior advocate at the Supreme Court and founder of Cyber Saathi, said, “Victims desist from pursuing legal remedies fearing the system.
Nappinai was Amicus Curiae before the Supreme Court in Re: Prajwala Letter dt. 18.2.2015, which dealt with online offences against women and children. This case led amongst other victim centric reliefs, to the setting up of the online cyber crime portal and a government helpline that makes it easier for women to report a cybercrime. In spite of this, Nappinai said, the number of women reporting has not changed significantly.
The Prajwala Letter case also led to the IT Rules of 2021 under which intermediaries have been directed to set up grievance officers that victims can easily contact. Once a complaint is made, platforms are required to take down the content within 24 hours.
In cases of non-consensual sharing of images or videos, often victims simply want the content to not spread online or to be taken down if it has already been shared; they might not be interested in seeing the perpetrator jailed or punished. “When you’re looking at victim-centric approaches,” Nappinai added, “it is critical to ensure victims have access to effective and low-cost remedies.”
Challenges of Being a Helpline Worker
Being a woman in a customer-facing role has its own challenges. While these women help others deal with harassment and gender bias, they grapple with it in their daily lives too.
Bhavana Pradan, a bilingual responder, remembered receiving blank calls on the helpline number. She tried calling back, assuming it was a technical issue. The caller answered and simply said, “Madam, maal chaiye, setting kara do aap (Madam, I want women. Set up something)” The incident left Bhavana livid. “He can’t even clearly say he wants a girl; he called us maal.”
For Bhavana, this was her first job after an eight year long maternity and childcare break. The fact that the position was remote allowed her to re-enter the workforce.
Sunita admitted that initially she had sleepless nights. But over time, she learned to draw boundaries. “Thoda toh apne aap ko pathar banana hi padta hai, (We have to turn ourselves into stone)” she said. She also feels that male callers particularly exhibit a sense of power and authority, expecting instant solutions. When the query is unsolvable, they lose their temper and resort to abusive language.
With Sunita, sometimes her family would question why she works in a job that requires her to speak to strangers all day when she has a husband who earns money. Her previous marketing job also involved speaking to strangers and a lot of travel, which her family did not object to. “[Because] that was more sophisticated; here we get calls from rural areas and across the country,” she said.
The pushback did not stop her. Sunita remained unfazed. With the support of a few family members, she kept herself motivated. Her job as a helpline worker made her acutely aware of the sacrifices and constant battles of being a woman.
Bhavana said that her favourite part is the short breaks in between calls when respondents talk to each other over tea and snacks. She talked fondly of the chit-chats and the weekly meetings. “Even if we don't share physical space, we are with each other digitally.” These brief moments of solidarity can go a long way in refreshing the mind. Especially, since the work itself can be emotionally taxing.
For Sunita, being a responder has been a “self-realisation” that has strengthened and emboldened her voice. Capturing the essence of her journey, she said, “People think we're helping others but in my case, I’m helping myself.”