It may not make the front page news everywhere, given the depressing familiarity that such reports often appear, but yesterday, we carried a report of a 14-year-old girl from Kandivli who took her life after being harassed by a boy, stalked online and reportedly having several obscene messages posted on her social networking page. This piece of news will be soon forgotten and this teenager will become a statistic among so many other young people who are taking their own lives for various reasons.

It is disappointing to note that the police did not treat the complaint with seriousness. Cyber bullying can be as harmful and hurtful as real bullying, sometimes even more, because the messages are seen by many. The keyboard becomes a tool to humiliate and harass. This was sexual harassment which eventually led to the girl taking her own life.