Even as the aftereffect of trolls abusing External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj continued today, Congress spokesperson Priyanka Chaturvedi has been threatened on Twitter with rape of her 10-year-old daughter, prompting a verbal duel between the BJP and the opposition party on trolling.
While senior Congress leader Abhishek Singhvi described Swaraj of victim of the "Frankenstein Monster", created by the BJP, ruling party spokesperson Nalin Kohli asked Chaturvedi to seek legal remedies and not politicise the issue.
Swaraj has been facing online abuse over a passport row involving an interfaith couple, following which she conducted a poll on Twitter yesterday asking users whether they "approve” such trolling to which 57 per cent respondents opposed hate messages as against 43 percent who said yes.
Becoming the first Union minister to come in support of Swaraj, Home Minister Rajnath Singh today termed trolling as "absolutely wrong".
Chaturvedi said she has filed a police complaint after a tweet, which was deleted later, by one @GirishK1605 who had threatened to rape her minor daughter.
"Running a Twitter handle in the name of God, you first wrongly quote me and then make indecent remarks about my daughter.Have some shame. Lord Ram will teach a lesson to people like you who have such lowly thought," she said on Twitter tagging the Mumbai Police and the original tweet.
A large number of people came out in support of her, with Singhvi saying that those who have abused her have not even spared a union minister.
"Anybody who creates a Frankenstein Monster must remember that (it)...swallow you up. Anybody who rides a tiger must know that the tiger has to decide when to eat you up, you cannot decide as to when to dismount. This is a tiger put beneath Ms Sushma Swaraj by the party to which she belongs,"Singhvi said.
He further added that "she cannot say so - let me say on her behalf. She is the victim of the Frankenstein Monster and the tiger which her party and her party’s thinking and party’s ‘soch’ has created... How many of her party colleagues have condemned it?."
Kohli condemned the threat to Chaturvedi and termed it as "horrible" and unacceptable in a civilised society. He, however, asked Chaturvedi to seek legal remedies and not politicise the issue.
"It is totally condemnable. Horrible. It is totally unacceptable. If a person issued any rape threat to any lady, no matter what be the age, it is absolutely condemnable. Such people who do so should bear in mind that a lady can be someone's daughter, sister, wife or whatever. It is not acceptable in a civilised society.
"If a person has issued a rape threat to anyone, he/she should seek legal remedies. Priyanka ji should not politicise it," he said.
NCP leader Supriya Sule also condemned the rape threats to Chaturvedi's daughter.
"The troller/account holder posting such threats much be booked under the law and needs to be punished immediate," Sule tweeted while asking Prime Minister Narendra Modi to take serious cognizance of the issue.
West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee also "strongly condemned" the language used in the online trolling of Swaraj and said people should never indulge in any form of verbal abuse.
