Mumbai’s ‘Police Didis’ go online to keep children safe on social media

When a Class 9 student from a Santacruz school uploaded her selfie on a social media site earlier this year, little did she think it would lead to months of harassment by a nameless, faceless person on the Internet.

The man, who was arrested after the student finally filed a police complaint, had created morphed images from her selfies, and then used them to threaten and sexually harass her online.

As stalking moves online from the real world, the Mumbai police has revamped its school outreach programme, Police Didi, to also teach children how to keep safe from harassment on social media. The Police Didi campaign was introduced in 2016, after several cases of sexual harassment at schools cropped up across the city.