Just days after a personal Instagram group ‘Bois Locker Room’ consisting a bunch of Delhi’s schoolgoing youngsters was uncovered for misusing pictures of minor women and propagating rape tradition and informal sexism, the same incident got here to mild in Kolkata.
It all started when a Twitter person named Aiyoobrows accused some males in Kolkata of “using semi-nude and nude pictures of women in a Google drive and circulating it among their friends.” The tweet mentioned that these males had been concerned in actions fairly just like that of the infamous Instagram group, ‘Bois Locker Room’. According to the tweets, the drive, which had pictures of girls saved with out their consent, had been used to threaten victims prior to now.
The sequence of tweets talked about that the concept of this specific Google drive was began by a scholar of Kolkata’s outstanding academic establishment, Jadavpur University (JU)– let’s name him S. He had allegedly given entry to the pictures to a couple of his buddies, college students of the identical college.
Soon after the tweet went viral, a number of girls wrote about their encounters with two former college students of Jadavpur University (JU). S was certainly one of them. The different scholar they referred to as out was S’s friend– let’s name him I, who was a scholar at JU’s economics division then. The girls wrote that the Google drive had been an ‘open secret’ in JU, albeit, nobody actually had proof to implicate the lads beforehand. According to sources, the drive was began someday round 2016, though the precise date stays unknown.
In the tweets, Kalyani*, who makes use of the Twitter title Aiyoobrows, talked about that there was a Google Drive with pictures of her. She mentioned she came upon about them lately.
Speaking to Information18, Kalyani mentioned that she had exchanged an intimate image of herself with S, in 2015 whereas texting him. Before the change, S and Kalyani have been buddies, was a part of the identical debating membership on the college collectively. While Kalyani had consensually despatched the picture, she had hoped that it might be deleted, or at the very least, saved non-public.
Kalyani mentioned that she didn’t completely really feel snug after her change with S, and determined to cease attending debating society conferences. Gradually, she minimize off contact with S as properly.
“I never told anyone about the picture I’d sent or that exchange. Then, almost two years later, someone mentioned that they had seen it,” she instructed Information18. “In 2018, a classmate of mine posted her #MeToo story once I supplied my solidarity to her. I discussed that there are poisonous males in all places. During the course of the dialog, she mentioned that she knew concerning the {photograph}. I used to be shocked. I had actually instructed no person about it in faculty.”
Kalyani then came upon that S had nonetheless saved her {photograph}. “Multiple people had seen it. She told me the debating society and the MUN committees knew about the existence of a ‘drive’ which was an “open secret.” Classmates of mine had seen my picture through A, another classmate of mine,” she mentioned.
This is when she came upon her {photograph} was circulated with out her consent. “My classmates had seen my picture and they didn’t think it was important enough to tell me,” she mentioned.
Another girl claimed that S confirmed her the actual Google drive himself. Mrittika* mentioned that she remembers him “flaunting” the drive to different college students.
On one specific day, she mentioned that S was boasting about his “conquests” as he tried to indicate the group the drive consisting of girls’s pictures. Here, “conquests” refers back to the a number of girls that this former JU scholar had encounters with and pictures that he had saved. “We were disgusted and made it clear that we were not interested to see the drive. I was in the first year back then and did not really have the courage to oppose him. We were dumbfounded, and I chose to ignore it back then,” Mrittika mentioned.
Sreetama Basu, a junior of S, additionally from the identical college, had the same encounter and it was solely a lot later when she came upon concerning the drive. In 2016, when Basu had been a first-year scholar within the Department of International Relations, she had met S by way of the faculty debating society and Model United Nations (MUN).
“One afternoon, I was hanging out with him and we had had a few drinks. He tried to get sexual, but I stopped him. At night, he texted me again. Soon, one thing led to another and I had sent him a photo of my bare back. Later, his then-girlfriend found out about it and confronted me. But what was shocking is, very soon, the whole university had found out about it,” Basu mentioned.
She additionally mentioned that she would not be shocked if her pictures are additionally current within the drive, the existence of which she had solely heard about in passing. “He keeps the photos as trophies of his conquests. The fact that everyone in college suddenly knew about my involvement with him was not bothering me as much as the fact that a private conversation, a photo meant to be between the two of us only, had been circulated and had been made public,” she added.
The undeniable fact that the drive existed did transform an “open secret.” While most college students had heard rumors that such a drive existed, the diploma of rumors various – the only ones talked a couple of assortment of what S referred to as ‘conquests’ in a public assertion, together with individuals who have talked about that they’ve seen, or heard concerning the drive.
A scholar who went to JU in the identical years as S instructed Information18 that the model of the hearsay that reached her was, “S’s friend A had access to the drive, and he went around showing it to people. I had also heard that S deleted this drive. I was shocked but relieved that maybe, after all, it has been deleted,” she mentioned.
Information18 reached out to S on the allegations of the drive, and whereas he has confirmed the existence of the drive, he mentioned that it was non-public and never shared with anybody.
“I wanted to back everything that was on my phone, up to a cloud platform, especially since I have an unfortunate habit of losing my phones. This included my official documents, lab assignments, PDFs, and a host of other things,” S instructed Information18.
“I am convinced that no one else was privy to the contents of my drive, I also am surprised at how a third party could have shown photos that were allegedly on my drive,” he added.
S had enrolled within the Electrical Engineering division of Jadavpur University in 2014 and was a part of the debating society in faculty. After graduating from JU in 2018, S has subsequently moved out of the town.
Information18 has additionally reached out to Internal Complaints Committee at JU to know if formal complaints had ever been lodged in opposition to S.
Another tweet posted by Aiyoobrows additionally reveals that A, S’s good friend, had proven the pictures within the drive to his buddies at NUJS (National Institute of Juridical Sciences). In the tweet, she has posted a few WhatsApp screenshots, which narrate the account of certainly one of A’s buddies. The identification of the particular person in query has been saved nameless.
According to the screenshots, A wished to indicate one thing “interesting” to his buddies and far to their shock confirmed them a nude picture of a girl whose face couldn’t be seen. On being requested, A revealed the lady’s identification as properly. When the individuals current objected, he blamed S for the drive, referred to as him “mad” and dismissed the difficulty.
Yesterday I tweeted about Imankalyan Ghosh exhibiting footage from the Gdrive to somebody from NUJS.
I’d prefer to make clear that the particular person in query was not in any approach concerned on this. He is merely a witness, and this is his testimony of what transpired between Iman and him. pic.twitter.com/f9xLmqj14N
— Aiyoobrows (@Bratmatcat) May 5, 2020
In a public assertion on Tuesday, which has now been eliminated, A wrote about his realisations. We, nevertheless, nonetheless have a replica of the assertion he had posted.
“I have realized that I have never questioned him (S*) regarding this, although I knew what was happening was wrong. It was probably my softness towards him that I did not do anything about it,” he wrote.
“On thinking deeper, I also realize that I was insensitive about this and I feel really devastated and sorry on imagining the trauma the complainants have felt. Hearing such activities from other people is also very traumatic to say the least, and I am deeply sorry for not acting on it personally.”
However, within the assertion, A doesn’t admit to having accessed the drive or exhibiting the pictures to his different buddies.
One factor is for positive, the drive does exist, as a number of girls have claimed and as S himself admits. The ‘secret’ was recognized to many throughout the JU circuit. Almost everybody related to these concerned within the row had heard rumours concerning the drive at one level or the opposite, however nobody had spoken up about it. Some have been scared for their very own security and that of their buddies, whereas some didn’t wish to level fingers with out tangible proof.
A ‘Bois locker room’ row within the capital metropolis lastly broke the silence of those girls in Kolkata.
*Names of the ladies have been modified to guard the identities.
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