A sinister doxxing campaign is targeting women protesters—social media stalkers, vigilante ‘counselors’

It begins with “minute-by-minute watch” on social media feeds and ends with vigilantes landing up at the homes of these young women to ‘counsel’ them and their parents.

Illustration: Shruti Naithani/ThePrint

New Delhi: The Delhi-based content creator in his 30s begins each day with a routine: scroll through Jantar Mantar protest reels, identify “opponents of Sanatan”, and circulate their faces for identification. Once identified, those on the receiving end, most of them young women, are subjected to unsolicited ‘counselling’ by vigilantes who land up in their homes and coerce them into issuing public apologies.

This pattern is now all too familiar as new video clips surface from the Cockroach Janta Party (CJP) protest at Jantar Mantar that brought about the resignation of Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan over the NEET (UG) 2026 paper leak.

As he combed through reels emanating from the CJP protest, one reel caught the eye of the content creator mentioned earlier. At 12.25 pm, he shared a clip of two women at the protest. The caption was unambiguous.

“These two girls went to a CJP protest one day. There, they put on quite a show with their body displays and blabbered away. When they realised their followers weren’t increasing, they started making vulgar comments about Hindu gods and goddesses to gain followers by becoming opponents of Sanatan,” he wrote on X. 

The post gained traction in no time, shared by multiple ‘pro-Sanatan’ handles on X, accompanied by commentary. One user commented: “Then one day she will say that Abdul has ravaged us, now call the Bajrang Dal, call the Hindus, get us justice.”

Gurmehar Kaur of Indian Youth Congress (IYC) said women are facing “relentless trolling and harassment” often just for posting simple, non-abusive updates or videos from the protest grounds online.

“The way these IT cells operate has become glaringly obvious. They take innocent clips, run them through high-follower accounts to signal a target, and then mobilise followers to dig up personal details: phone numbers, college names, home addresses, and family accounts,” Gurmehar told ThePrint. 

According to her, even when a social media post is completely harmless, “the goal is to intimidate, humiliate, and force women to delete their accounts and stay quiet.”

ThePrint spoke to at least two Delhi-based individuals operating ‘pro-Sanatan’ handles and another creating ‘pro-government’ content who explained how they identify young women from the CJP protest and gather their personal details.

All three, however, also maintained they are against any form of online harassment, and that a woman’s personal details must not be shared online.

‘Kept minute-by-minute watch’

The Delhi-based content creator in his 30s, who admits to creating and sharing ‘pro-government’ content online, said he attended the CJP protest to see for himself what was happening at Jantar Mantar.

He told ThePrint: “I went there to see their agenda, what started as a student protest, was then hijacked into a protest where such abusive statements were normalised. It was about religion, anti-national people making statements, those who participated in either farmers protests or Shaheen Bagh were part of it…it turned into something else…”

He said he knew content emerging from the protest would go viral.

“We kept a minute-by-minute watch on X and Instagram, sometimes I would go to Connaught Place, and we could see similar faces making similar content. It helped us identify who is who,” he explained.

The details, he said, were then shared with “our social media teams, WhatsApp and Facebook groups who then ensured they found out their identity…”

Receiving a ‘tip-off’

For a ‘pro-Sanatan’ Instagram user, who, too, has been keeping an eye on videos coming out of the CJP protest, the first one that caught his eye was that of a young woman, seen abusing PM Narendra Modi. She had dragged in Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni too.

“When I first saw the video, it was extremely offensive. I knew action should be taken against such content. It was disturbing,” he told ThePrint.

The 42-year-old said he took part in various protests in the past including the one triggered by the Nirbhaya case in 2012 but “never abused a political leader; it is not decent”.

Asked how he identifies those in the video, he said there are more ways than one to do it. “When many social media accounts shared the video, seeking her details, we received multiple tip-offs on who this woman is, where she lives, where she works.”

He claimed family members or neighbours of the women being targeted often reach out. “There is a wide network across social media platforms, especially on WhatsApp, where details are shared easily. Everything is online now. One can’t stay in isolation.”

In this particular case, the video he shared online was that of a 15-year-old who later issued a video statement apologising for her remarks at the CJP protest.

In the video, she said: “I went to Connaught Place with my friends in July. We came across a group of people who were using abusive and objectionable language against the Prime Minister. They influenced me and encouraged me to repeat those words, and I did.”

She added, “I am not able to look anyone in the eye. I appeal to the entire country and everyone to please forgive me. I am only 15 years old. This is my first and last mistake, and I will never repeat such an act again.”

After she issued the apology, many social media users even claim to have used AI to scan her facial features, and to predict her age. The claim was that the girl in the initial video and the one making the apology were different.

Taking the legal route

The video of the 15-year-old from the CJP protest also reached Smriti Singh Chandel, a lawyer at the Supreme Court of India.

“When I saw the video, I managed to contact the person who shot this at Jantar Mantar. He sent me the video and told me that the video person had pointed the camera at multiple people there, and this woman came suddenly. All of a sudden, the woman had then abused the PM, and this video went viral,” Chandel told ThePrint, adding that they managed to get personal details through a network of social media handles.

Chandel then filed a zero FIR in Noida, which was later transferred to Delhi Police for investigation. That FIR, Chandel said, has now been withdrawn. “It is important for us to take legal measures here because there are people ruining the government’s name. You cannot be abusing the PM like this, while being part of a protest for the NEET paper leak.”

In between the chaos unfolding on social media, where young women’s videos and personal details were being shared without a second thought, the Prime Minister in a late-night video statement Friday, said it pained him that not only he but also his late mother had been subjected to “filthy abuses” at the CJP protest. 

The “misguided children” should be forgiven and put on the right path, he said.

However, those doxxing young women for voicing their views at Jantar Mantar said the demand for a public apology is non-negotiable. For instance, a 42-year-old resident of Rohini, who operates a ‘pro-Sanatan’ handle, said he made sure to track down the two young women who made remarks ‘targeting’ Hindu deities. “This was supposed to be a protest for students, but why were Hindu gods dragged into it?”

He also said his social media feed was full of “content abusing PM Modi”.

How did he locate the two young women in the video? The 42-year-old claimed he received a “tip-off” from men who knew them. “They (men who knew them) told me where they (the two women) live, so I met them. I first counselled their parents, I told them it was disrespectful to abuse the PM, his parents. The two women were also told about legal consequences for recording such videos—what would happen to their future, their family. When they realised they were wrong, they apologised.”

He added that the two young women, both content creators “were scared and knew if they didn’t apologise, they would face more threats”. 

‘Nothing but intimidation’

The harassment of young women who took part in the CJP protest does not stop with doxxing. In some cases, it spirals into public humiliation. Numerous reels and posts show young women who attended the protest being slapped or assaulted by family members.

“This should have been done earlier,” one Facebook user wrote under one such video. Another wrote: “If she had been given good values (sanskar), this wouldn’t have happened.”

In another widely shared video, a visibly distressed woman is seen crying as fellow protesters ask where she was hit. That turned into a reaction video featuring a man laughing at her distress. Comments below the video justified the violence, with one user calling it “just a trial”.

‘Pro-Sanatan’ women influencers have also joined in. In several videos, they are seen mocking women protesters distributing food at the protest site by claiming these women don’t even know the full form of “NEET” or “CBSE”.

In one instance, after a woman was seen making a sarcastic remark while serving food at the CJP protest at Jantar Mantar, she became the subject of intense online mockery. Shortly after, a video of her public apology emerged. In the clip, she is seen crying, saying she is traumatised by constant abuse and death threats.

To make these ‘targets’ easier to spot, some social media handles are now using AI-generated images with bold red text overlaying the faces of female protesters, marking them as ‘targets’ across platforms.

Former Delhi cabinet minister and Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) leader Saurabh Bhardwaj told ThePrint, “Sharing information of people online, their photo and video being made viral, is nothing but intimidation.”

He added that after the 15-year-old girl’s apology went viral, several ‘pro-Sanatan’ handles shared her details, including that she worked part-time at a parlour. “This creates a class divide. Why would a salon worker join a NEET paper leak protest? All this intimidation was being done to create fear in the minds of parents and children, that these are the consequences you will have to face…”

IYC’s Gurmrhar Kaur said there is another angle worth looking at. “…this is the first major protest with mass mobilisation of young people across India since the CAA-NRC protests. A huge number of the protesters out there at Jantar Mantar right were between 15 and 20-years-old.”

Adding, “When the last major wave of protests happened and the BJP IT cell was doxxing and villainising regular citizens, these young protestors were maybe 8 to 11-years-old. So while they knew about how the BJP functions online, this is the very first time they are experiencing it happening directly to their peers, their friends, and themselves.”

(Edited by Amrtansh Arora)