Mumbai: Hindi cinema filmmaker Anurag Kashyap’s daughter Aaliyah took to Instagram Friday to post screen shots of rape threats she has been receiving, among other derogatory comments, after she shared a photograph in lingerie recently.
“The past few weeks have been really hard on my mental health. Ever since I posted a photo of me in lingerie, I have been getting the most vile, degrading and disgusting comments, I have never felt more frightened than I have in the past few weeks to the point where I considered deleting my Instagram. I have tried to ignore the harassment and shrug it off but the truth is that we need to speak about it because these kinds of comments contribute to the rape culture that affects all women in India (and the rest of the world) in one way or the other.
“We seem to be a country that will hold candle marches for a woman after she’s been sexually assaulted but won’t protect a woman while she’s alive. And the truth is that women in India grow up being sexualized their whole lives, I have grown up with these kinds of comments to the point where it culminated into me being sexually assaulted as a minor by a middle aged man. The double standard is that many of the people who have harassed me, along with many other women, are hypocrites. They love to pretend that they’re on a moral high ground buy in reality, they are the ones promoting rape culture that exists,” she wrote.
Aaliyah captioned her post saying: “TW: sexual assault, rape thank you @shaiwriting for helping me put my thoughts and feelings into words.”
In the past, Aaliyah has uploaded a video on her YouTube channel where she spoke about online harassment and bullying.
IANS