Online harassment in 2026 looks different from what the original IT Act drafters imagined. It is repeated WhatsApp messages from a burner number, an ex who has built a fake profile to follow every move, an aggrieved client running a doxxing campaign on Reddit, a stranger who has obtained a phone number through a leaked database and now sends threatening voice notes at 2 a.m.
The law has caught up enough to give victims real remedies. Most do not know the remedies exist. This is the practical guide we wish more people had read before they walked into our office.
What the law says
Cyber stalking against a woman is a specific offence under Section 78 of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita (BNS), formerly Section 354D of the IPC. It covers monitoring a woman's use of the internet, email or any other form of electronic communication despite her clearly indicated disinterest. First conviction is up to three years; second is up to five.
Beyond stalking-specific provisions, the toolkit includes Section 351 BNS (criminal intimidation, formerly 506 IPC), Section 79 BNS (insult to the modesty of a woman, formerly 509 IPC), Section 75 BNS (sexual harassment, formerly 354A IPC), Section 67 of the IT Act for obscene material, Section 66E of the IT Act for violation of privacy through capture or transmission of images of private areas, and Section 66C of the IT Act for identity theft where impersonation is involved. For non-consensual intimate imagery, Section 67A of the IT Act is the heavier provision.
Where the harasser is a former intimate partner, the Protection of Women from Domestic Violence Act, 2005 adds civil remedies — protection orders, residence orders, and the power to restrain electronic contact. These are often faster to obtain than criminal process.
Hour 0: do not engage, do preserve
The instinct is to reply, to argue, to threaten back. Do not. Every reply gives the harasser more material and dilutes your eventual narrative in court. Block when ready, but only after you have preserved the evidence.
- Export the full chat history with media — WhatsApp's 'Export Chat' to email is admissible if accompanied by a Section 63 BSA certificate (formerly Section 65B of the Evidence Act).
- Screenshot every message with full headers visible — date, time, sender number, profile name.
- If calls — note timestamps in a written log; if recorded, preserve the original recording with hash.
- Email harassment — preserve the full SMTP headers, not just the rendered body. Headers are how we trace origin servers.
- Social media — capture profile URLs, post URLs and account IDs separately. Where possible, also archive on archive.ph.
Hour 1–24: the formal complaint
File at cybercrime.gov.in (NCRP) and walk the printed acknowledgement into the local Cyber Crime Police Station. In Bangalore, the city Cyber Crime PS at Madiwala and the CID Cyber Crime cell at Carlton House are the relevant points of contact. Where the harassment is from an unknown number, the FIR is what unlocks Section 91 BNSS notices to telecom operators and platforms — that is how the actual identity behind the burner is established.
If you are a working woman and the harassment touches your workplace — including from a colleague over personal channels — the Sexual Harassment of Women at Workplace (Prevention, Prohibition and Redressal) Act, 2013 (POSH) gives you an Internal Committee track that runs parallel to the criminal complaint.
The civil track
Civil remedies are underused but powerful. Injunctive relief from the City Civil Court or High Court can restrain a named or unknown defendant from contacting the petitioner, posting about her, or publishing identified categories of content. John Doe orders bind unknown actors and intermediaries. Damages claims are increasingly successful where reputational and emotional harm is documented.
Common traps
- Confronting the harasser. It almost always escalates and almost never resolves.
- Deleting messages because they are upsetting to read. Move them to an archive folder; do not delete.
- Trusting a platform's report-and-block to be enough. Sometimes it is. For repeat or organised harassment, it is not.
- Going to the police without an evidence pack. The investigating officer is more likely to act when handed a clean, indexed bundle than a verbal account.
- Waiting until 'it gets bad enough'. Pattern evidence is what wins these matters — the early messages matter as much as the later ones.
When to engage a lawyer
Engage one when the harassment becomes patterned, when it crosses into threats or images, when it involves a known person who is likely to deny it, or when an FIR has been filed and you want it actually investigated. The right legal pressure early changes the trajectory of these matters significantly.
If you or someone in your family is dealing with online stalking or harassment right now, message us on +91 63634 69138. The first conversation is privileged and unhurried — and where the situation is live, the first 24 hours decide how quickly the harassment stops.
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