(Trigger Warning: The article speaks about sexual assault, rape)
Anurag Kashyap's daughter Aaliyah has taken to Instagram to post a long message about how she has been subjected to 'degrading and vile' comments and harassment after she posted photos from a lingerie photoshoot. Aaliyah also shared screenshots of some of the comments.
Aaliyah said she had been contemplating deleting Instagram after receiving rape threats and abusive comments.
"The past few weeks have been really hard on my mental health. Ever since I posted a photo of me in lingerie, I have been getting the most vile, degrading and disgusting comments. I have never felt more frightened than I have in the past few weeks to the point where I considered deleting my instagram. I have tried to ignore the harassment and shrug it off but the truth is that we need to speak about it because these kind of comments contribute to the rape culture that affects all women in India (and the rest of the world) in one way or the other," she wrote.
Aaliyah called out the hypocrisy of those who participate in candlelight marches after a woman is raped and murdered but 'won't protect a woman while she's alive.' She added that growing up with these kind of comments ed up to her being 'sexually assaulted as a minor by a middle aged man.'
"The double standard is that many of the people who have harassed me, along with many other woman, are hypocrites. They love to pretend that they're on a moral high ground but in reality, they are the ones promoting the rape culture that exists," Aaliyah wrote.
Earlier, in a video on YouTube, Aaliyah had opened up about being trolled and how that had affected her. “People were telling me that I should be ashamed of being Indian and posting stuff like that. People were sending me rape threats. People were calling me a prostitute. People were DMing me and asking me what my rate was.... That incident over the picture got me a lot", she had said.
(At The Quint, we question everything. Play an active role in shaping our journalism by becoming a member today.)