Girija K.P., owner of Girija Theatre, Thrissur, who established a foothold in the male-dominated movie business sector, is now in a shadow fight.
Some cyberbullies are persistently attacking her and her cinema house. The website of her movie house and her social media accounts have been suspended over a dozen times due to mass reporting. Fake IDs have been created in her name and fake news spread.
Girija Theatre, Thrissur, once had a notorious reputation of showing only adult-only movies. It needed a lot of courage and struggle for Dr. Girija and her sister Krishnapriya, who inherited the cinema house as family property, to bring family audience to the movie house.
The public used to taunt the family for running such a theatre. However, years later, the theatre turned Dr. Girija, a dentist by profession, to a proud entrepreneur. However, Dr. Girija, who had successfully braved many odds, is in dire straits now.
“I have been subjected to repeated cyberattacks since 2018. The website of the theatre, which provides facility for online ticket booking, and my social media accounts have been continuously suspended due to mass reporting by unknown persons. In the past few years, my site and accounts have been suspended at least 12 times,” she says.
“My theatre is not on major ticket booking sites. We do it through our sites and social media accounts. After my Facebook and Instagram accounts were suspended repeatedly, I started WhatsApp booking. Then I started getting obscene messages and threats,” she says.
“I feel I am being targeted by somebody in the film field itself. They must be taking me as a soft target. Distributors refuse to give me films fearing lack of promotion,” she says.
Dr. Girija says she approached the cybercell many times but to no avail. “Once I approached the cybercell with an account that was spreading fake messages against my theatre. But the account was deleted before it could be tracked. Then the cyberpolice said they can’t do anything as the account had been deleted.”
But cybercrime investigator Pattathil Dhanya Menon refutes this argument. “The service providers should give details of the deleted profile or account if the law enforcement agencies ask for it.“
“Any business house that wants presence in the digital space should have a proper digital management plan. In the absence of proper planning this can happen to any business,” says Ms. Menon.
However, the officer-in-charge of the city cybercell says they have not received any proper complaint about the cyberbullying faced by Dr. Girija with relevant documents. “We are ready to offer her technical support in case of cyberbullying in future,” he said.
