Comedian Agrima Joshua invited social media fury last month for an old video wherein she quoted jokes from a popular forum about the upcoming Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj's statue in the Arabian Sea.
The outrage and involvement of Maharashtra Home Minister Anil Deshmukh resulted in Joshua deleting the video and apologising for the same.
However, it didn’t shield her from scores of rape threats and abuses hurled at her on virtual platforms.
While the accused were nabbed for their share of crime, Agrima has now compared her situation with that of late Bollywood actor Sushant Singh Rajput.
In a thread shared on Twitter, the comedian wrote, Remember how the UP Government cared about me when all of this was happening with me in Maharashtra? NO? Yeah, because that didn't happen. Just remember, BJP and their coalition ruled states are only here to serve their own interests. They don't care about justice.”
“Instead, they mobilised troll armies against me, sent me more rape threats, I have screenshots of tweets stating that I "should be ga*g-r*p*d by Bajr*ng D*l". My YouTube video was entirely about being a Lakhnavi, settled in Mumbai. I spoke of my roots. Where was this love for me?” she added.
Agrima further stated, “Instead of swooping to the defense of a person proudly stating she is from Gomti Nagar Lucknow, they just called me 'ricebag' - because they can't wrap their heads around the concept of a Hindi-speaking Isaai from the heartland. They reduced my entire ethnic identity to my faith.”
Relating her story with Sushant, she said, “I related the hardest to SSR because he too was an engineer like me, he spoke of his JEE coaching days. He too was a "bhaiya" in Mumbai, like me. His success was so inspiring for my lot. To see his name being politicised for cheap votebank politics in Maharashtra is DISGUSTING.”
“Instead, it was the @MumbaiPolice and the @PuneCityPolice that cooperated with me when I made an official complaint against the deluge of threats I have been receiving. Number of people from my home state UP reaching out to me? ZERO. Also, the selective feminism of RW women like Nupur maam, from OpIndia. Within no time, an article mocking my alleged humiliation was ready, almost like it was pre-written. Did the story cover how their own @HinduITCell was amplifying that clip from my video? No. Lol. jOuRnALiZzm,” she added.
Earlier this month, Mumbai Police's cybercrime cell arrested two more men Ashraf Shaikh and Virat Sharma, in connection with the rape threats and abuse of Agrima. This comes two weeks after Mumbai Police had arrested Imtiyaz Sheikh alias Umesh Dada, 28, a Nalasopara resident for uploading an abusive, threatening video on social media.
Preliminary investigation revealed that the duo were friends with Umesh Dada, who is also friends with another YouTuber Shubham Mishra, who was arrested from Vadodara by Gujarat Police for similar charges.
