Police in the Indian city of Bengaluru have opened an investigation into coordinated online abuse under provisions covering sexual harassment, after a complaint from the actor and former member of parliament Ramya.
A first information report was registered on 28 July 2026 naming 43 social media accounts. The complaint alleges the accounts are operated by supporters of another actor, Darshan Thoogudeepa, who is not accused of any wrongdoing. The case has been transferred to the Central Crime Branch of the city police for a detailed investigation.
Online abuse in India is more commonly pursued under general provisions of the Information Technology Act, which address individual acts by individual users. Invoking sexual harassment provisions against a group of accounts treats the campaign itself as the offence.
Whether that holds is the question the case will settle. Coordinated abuse is difficult to prosecute because responsibility is distributed: each account may post material that would not, alone, meet a threshold, while the aggregate effect on the person targeted is severe. Few jurisdictions have found a way to reach it.
Technology-facilitated gender-based violence — abuse committed, assisted or amplified by digital tools and directed at people because of their gender — has been documented as disproportionately affecting women in public life in India, though the country publishes no regular data on prosecutions.
No individual has been charged. Darshan Thoogudeepa is not accused of any wrongdoing in the complaint, which concerns accounts said to be operated by his supporters.