Who Is Rachita Taneja, the Creator of Sanitary Panels?

Attorney General KK Venugopal has given consent to initiate contempt proceedings against artist Rachita Taneja.

(Photo: Altered by The Quint)

On 1 December, Attorney General KK Venugopal gave his consent to initiate contempt proceedings against artist Rachita Taneja, reported Bar and Bench. Taneja is the creator of a social media webcomic called Sanitary Panels. According to the report, the request to initiate contempt proceedings was made by a law student, Aditya Kashyap.

The case against Taneja refers to a series of Sanitary Panels illustrations that comment on the Supreme Court granting bail to Arnab Goswami in an abetment to suicide case from 2014.

The Attorney General said that her tweets were, "audacious assault and insult to the institution."

Who Is Rachita Taneja?

Rachita Taneja is an Indian artist/cartoonist who identifies as the creator of the webcomic titled 'Sanitary Panels’, which she started in 2014.

Taneja is also a co-founder of Internet Freedom Foundation, which advocates for net neutrality, privacy and free speech on the internet. She reportedly attended the Obama Foundation's TownHall in New Delhi in 2017.

What Is Sanitary Panels?

According to Taneja, "Sanitary Panels is a feminist webcomic that comments on culture, society and politics. Sanitary Panels is active on social media through both Instagram, Facebook and Twitter. From mental health to social issues to humour, the webcomic covers a diverse range of issues using simple, predominantly black and white, stick figures that Taneja manually creates using a pen and paper.

Sanitary Panels has an active Patreon page as well where individuals can show their support to the webcomic by making a contribution.

Past Criticism

This isn't the first time that Sanitary Panels has gotten into trouble. On 31 October 2018, Taneja shared a comic through Sanitary Panels. The comic criticised Facebook for not taking action against the abusive and hateful comments being targeted at Taneja. The comic was later taken down by the platform.

Taneja tweeted, "Update: my comic has been taken down on Instagram and Facebook both. This is vile - I'm not allowed to criticise Facebook but they have no problems when I get rape threats. Please share the screenshots and the comics and RT this.”

The comic, eventually, was unblocked by Facebook. She told Scroll that Facebook had neither informed her about how exactly the comic violated their guidelines, nor had it given Taneja a chance to appeal against their move. Rachita Taneja's work can be accessed @sanitarypanels across social media platforms.