The social, legal, technical perspective of cyber stalking in India

This paper explores the social, technical and legal perspectives of cyberstalking in India. With the growth of the Internet, cyberstalking as a potential cybercrime has achieved many fold growths in India over the last decade. Factors such as, poor social perception towards the crime, cultural conflict and ignorance, subjective characteristics and habits of the victims, freedom and remoteness of Internet technologies and inadequacy of cyber legislation in preventing and penalising the crime have facilitated the rapid growth and proliferation of cyberstalking in India. In addition to low levels of awareness on the part of the victim and law enforcement authorities, anecdotal evidence suggests there is a fear of secondary victimisation, both in victims and their relatives. This has become a major cause for the majority of stalking crimes to remain unregistered. In case of India, there is clear dearth of research in relation to the social, legal and technical perspectives of cyberstalking. None of the Indian studies have provided conclusive findings on these three perspectives. This paper recommends further comprehensive studies into cyberstalking in India.