Cops identify 12 accounts from where Gurmehar got threats

In a development to the Gurmehar Kaur case, the investigators have claimed to have identified 10-12 users who had threatened Kaur with rape and death threats. The police had zeroed in on the accounts on the basis of the initial screenshots provided by Kaur. However, many of the users have deactivated the accounts and some of them are said to have fled Delhi.

The police had started the investigation by segregating the comments on the basis of basic comments, trolling and criminal threats. "In a cyber bullying investigation you find that the cyber bullies start to troll the victim but in this case, there have been several thousand comments. We had to segregate the basic and troll comments and find out the threats," said a senior police official privy to the investigation.

In social media, basic comments and trolls are natural, thus, police are not giving much attention to this form of abuse but they are also not taking them out of context.

Kaur had later left Delhi after the comments started to overwhelm her. The police are also trying to identify the users who were active during the Gurmehar episode. Further, the police are also trying to map out the areas from where the comments had originated.

However, Gurmehar still has not given the investigators the URLs of her abusers that will help in identifying the user accounts responsible for the incident. The police have said that they have been talking to her on a daily basis and have been communicating through emails but are yet to receive the links.

"From the first day itself, the Cyber Cell has been investigating the case on the basis of the screenshots and we cannot book them just on the basis of screenshots. How can the police filter the real users from non-pertinent threats?" asked a Cyber Cell source.

Further, the source added: "If you make a comment against the BJP, within half an hour several hundred trolls will attack you. How does one filter the pertinent and non-pertinent threats?"