Avoid getting intimate on chat with strangers
It’s a lesson IIT Kanpur graduate Sanjay (name changed) will never forget. Befriending a woman on Facebook has landed him in the Delhi high court. It all started in August last year, when Neha (name changed) sent him a request on Facebook. Soon friendship grew into long chats, and in November Neha came down to Delhi to meet him and proposed to him. When Sanjay politely turned down her proposal, Neha started emotionally blackmailing him, threatening to commit suicide. He confided in his family and has now moved the court for protection.
Speaking over the phone, Sanjay said he is wary now of making friends online. “She sent me a request on FB, I didn’t know it would turn my life upside down. I am never going to accept any friendship requests. The main reason to approach the court is to save her life. I didn’t do anything wrong, and I don’t want to be dragged into a suicide case.”
Sanjay’s advocate Rohit Kaliyar says, “A bailable warrant has been issued to Neha by the high court. My client is mentally harassed and is willing to go to any length to end this matter. He hasn’t been going to the office as he’s not in the right frame of mind.” Sanjay confided in his family and is relieved that they supported him, he says, “Their first reaction was that I shouldn’t have spoken to a stranger. I hope this phase will pass soon. I don’t know what she mistook my friendship for, but I never made her feel anything else.”
This isn’t an isolated case, most youngsters claim to have received random friendship requests on FB. Says Shikha Sinha (name changed), a PR executive, “I had accepted a stranger’s request because he was a friend’s friend. Little did I realise that our FB chats would soon become a daily affair. He began insisting that I come online everyday and within a week said he liked me and even offered to come down to Delhi from Chandigarh. That’s when I blocked him on FB and removed him from my friends list. But it didn’t end there, as he soon began sending me emotional messages on my Gmail account, which I ignored, and I’m glad that we hadn’t exchanged numbers yet.”
There’s a thin line between a friendship and a fling. Communication between two people over SMSes, BBM and chats can easily be mistaken for something else.
Dr Rachna K. Singh, lifestyle management expert at Artemis Health Institute, Gurgaon, says, “Communication is biased today, we don’t know how our SMSes, chat is being perceived by the other. Today, conversations begin with emotional involvement and can easily be misconstrued. You write something, and it can be taken in another way. Youngsters need to be very careful about what they project, especially on a social networking site.”
But this is not restricted to Web alone, Sameera Nath, student, claims she gets random SMSes from unknown numbers. “I get messages requesting to be friends, but I don’t bother replying.”
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