Chennai sources have stated that 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 and they are believed to be rabid fans of actor Vijay, whose film the journalist had criticized.
Earlier 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. Meanwhile she was bombarded by vulgar tweets and threats. There have been around 63,000 tweets over the past three days and a derogatory hash tag trended on Twitter.
At one point, the journalist tweeted "It's clearly organized that there was a planned wave of trolls at the appointed time, 6 pm." Currently 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". Meanwhile the police have booked a case under the IT Act and the Indecent Representation of Women Act among others.
In this case, actor Vijay who kept a muted response for a week's time finally opened up his mouth and apologized for his fans immature behavior. He also requested them not to indulge in such cheap activities in future as it spoils his reputation!
