Justice For Manav Singh

Pictures: Manav Singh Source: Twitter

This is going to shock you, so please be prepared. I came to know about this only yesterday and I searched to read newspaper articles about this case before writing this. I have mentioned references at the end of the blog post.

Manav Singh was a 17 year old boy from Gurugram. He was a student of class 12^th at a prestigious school in Gurugram. He was a member of an Instagram group; along with many other boys and girls. A girl, perhaps of same age or younger to him, made false allegations of molestation and rape against him in that Instagram group and other group members started abusing and threatening him. The boy got scared, tried to explain but no one listened to him; then some boys told him that the police would arrest him and hence he jumped from the balcony of his 11th story flat and ended his life.

The boy did not leave any suicide note but chats and messages on his phone showed that other boys had warned him that the police would arrest him and hence he was scared.

The sequence of events from what I read is as follows. This was the time when "Me Too" campaign was floating on social media where women from all over the world had started making allegations of sexual or other harassment against men. During that controversy, another controversy broke out in Delhi. It was called "Boys Locker Room" which was a "closed chat room" on Instagram where teenage boys from elite families of Delhi were talking ‘dirty’ against girls. Someone revealed screenshots of the group in the open and it created a big controversy. Delhi Commission of Women (DCW) lodged a formal police complaint against those minor boys and the DCW chief tweeted publicly to Delhi police for taking stern action against the boys. (Later on, it was found that the posts about "rape" were made by a girl who had created a fake ID of a boy!) This was being reported daily in the media.

During this time, the above incident happened in an Instagram group where a girl made a false allegation against Manav, claiming that he had "raped" her 2 years back when he was only 15. She did not provide any evidences or supporting facts and it was assumed to be a false case but the boys in the Instagram group got an opportunity to harass Manav. After Manav committed suicide, the girl who had made allegations against him posted another message that if Manav could not tolerate her allegations, he was "weak-hearted" and it was his problem, not hers. It is shocking to see this level of insensitivity seen in teenage kids now a day.

We have many takeaways from this case:

1. Social media usage is already officially restricted for those below 18 years of age; but this is not being seriously monitored. Parents should discourage their kids from joining social media and should also not talk about social media in front of kids, since they will get curious after hearing about it.
2. Public “naming and shaming” has its own downside since no one verifies the claims. Our society has a general tendency to blame everything on the “boys” and consider girls as virtuous (since they used to be so in the past) and this has caused a very unfair environment for boys since they feel they won’t be trusted even when they are right.  
3. The police or the national commission of women should have traded caution in this case since the boys were all minor and there was no urgency of action. But in these times when a lot is being done for publicity, perhaps caution is a tragedy.

Justice for Manav

Manav Singh’s father has filed a police complaint in this matter and he is waiting for action taken. I read that the girl moved to Punjab after Manav died and the boys who threatened Manav switched off their phones. But this should not stop the police from investigating the case. Proper justice as per the law should be done. 

If you are on Twitter, you can join Manav’s father at https://twitter.com/justice4manav and support his cause. Otherwise, if you see young age boys and girls in stress, try to bring them to perspective and never let them get misled by believing in rumors. Also, we should try to protect kids and teens around us from excessive exposure to media and adult content. These would be true tributes to Manav.

With hope and pray that Manav gets justice and no other kid suffers like he had to.

- Rahul Tiwary

References: TOI, Zee, STP, TMF, FPJ, OpInd