A Pakistani girl commits suicide due to social media blackmailing

The group of blackmailers also forced her to give a fair amount of money.

A girl in Badin, a remote district in Sindh province, has committed suicide by consuming poison after getting upset with social media blackmailing, as reported by Geo News.

The deceased girl’s family found a letter in her room which revealed that she was being blackmailed by a boy and his friends over edited pictures on social media platforms. The three boys also received Rs. 50,000 from the girl by threatening her to post her pictures on social media.

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According to the local media reports, the three suspects had also sent an edited picture to her fiancé, following which her engagement was called off. It is sad to hear to such negative news coming from remote areas of Pakistan whereby sexual harassment on social media leads to the loss of life and relations.

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According to the Badin city police, the suspects are on the run and police is putting its foremost effort to arrest the culprits. The police officials have not disclosed the identity of the suspects while the deceased’s family has revealed the names of the three suspects to police that were written in the letter.

People, particularly women in Pakistan, face frequent abuse and harassment on social media. According to a report by the Digital Rights Foundation (DRF) in May 2017, 40% of women in the country faced various forms of harassment on the internet.

The number of people using social media in Pakistan is increasing each day with over 40 million Pakistanis now registered with Facebook. But the rapid growth has also sparked an online debate about misogyny and abuse of the platform.