Bengaluru journalist Dhanya Rajendran would not have imagined that a casual comment on a movie would provoke vicious trolling on social media. Four persons have been charged for their threats and abuse on Twitter targeting the journalist.

They are believed to be rabid fans of actor Vijay, whose film the journalist had criticised.

On Friday, Ms Rajendran tweeted after watching Shah Rukh Khan's latest release When Harry Met Sejal that it was "worse" than Vijay's Sura released a few years ago, because then she had stayed at least till the interval.

She was bombarded by vulgar tweets and threats. There have been around 63,000 tweets over the past three days and a derogatory hashtag trended on Twitter.

At one point, the journalist tweeted: "It's clearly organised. There was a planned wave of trolls at the appointed time, 6 pm."

Investigators say based on her complaint, they are trying to identify four people who tweet using aliases. A senior officer said: "We are adopting conventional methods to trace these people. Some have also deleted their accounts".

Actor Vijay has not responded yet to the controversy. A source close to him said: "We are studying if this is a motivated campaign against the actor."

The police have booked a case under the IT Act and the Indecent Representation of Women Act among others.

Share This Post