Gossip Twitter accounts go quiet after FIR

 

But on Thursday journalist Swati Chaturvedi approached the Delhi police saying she was being trolled by @LutyensInsider and the twitter handle was in fact, spreading claims that she was stalking Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi.

 

The Delhi Police is currently investigating the matter. The handle @LutyensInsider, has since disappeared from Twitter. Both @Lutyen’sInsider and @Lutyen’sMasala managed to gather thousands of followers with tweets aimed at politicos, Delhi-based journalists and their alliance.

 

But @LutyensInsider took it too far when it said Chaturvedi (@bainjal) was a “nymphomaniac”. Chaturvedi, in an interview with a news website said she couldn’t take the trolling “any more”.

 

“I was up all night after that tweet. This @LutyensInsider handle kept escalating. You are calling me a ‘nymphomaniac’ on what basis? This is sexual harassment of the worst order,” she said.

 

Unlike @Lutyen’sMasala, @LutyensInsider actually stated names in its tweets. One of the tweets, about Aam Aadmi Party’s Ashutosh read: “Ashutosh’s wife has given him time till May to earn something. She was very scared to talk to Shazial Ilmi who lost all her savings for AAP.”

 

Meanwhile, journalists are praising Chaturvedi’s decision to go ahead with a formal complaint. 

Sagarika Ghose tweeted, “You hunted the devil down.” The two twitter handles also gave birth to a rash of copycat accounts releasing purported insider information from within political parties.

 

For example, @Lutyens’ Spice had tweeted this last year: “Rajnath Singh is upset with Amith Shah and Modi. His decisions as HM are not respected by either.” The accounts were, at best, feeding journalists a steady stream of unverified inputs. But Thursday’s FIR could mean the end of the road for many of these accounts, hiding behind the veil of web-based anonymity.