<p class="title">Hours after the arrest of student-activist Amulya Leona at Freedom Park on Thursday night, the 19-year-old girl was subjected to unprecedented abuse on social media even as the number of her Facebook followers began to multiply. </p>.<p class="bodytext">Although Leona’s account initially numbered only a few hundred followers in the days before the incident, by Friday evening, the number of followers had spiked to over 4,500 individuals. <span class="italic">DH</span> which tracked the spike during the day estimated that the number of new followers began to increase by about 15 every five minutes from 3 pm onwards. </p>.<p class="bodytext">However, these increases appeared to come with an exponential increase in the number of trolls who left nearly 1,000 angry messages on one post alone which showed a photograph of Prime Minister Narendra Modi speaking to Muslims. The caption to the post read: “Modiji loves Muslims. Modi ji loves people from all religions. It is only sanghis and idiots who hate Muslims and people from other religions.”</p>.<p class="bodytext">Among the the barrage of messages, written primarily by users with male names, were messages describing the 19-year-old as a prostitute, a terrorist, a pakistani sleeper cell agent and even mockingly as the “daughter of Sunny Leone.”</p>.<p class="bodytext">More seriously, one user offered a sum of Rs 1.20 lakh for the activist’s ‘head’.</p>.<p class="bodytext">Cyber police said they did not have any mandate to tackle the online abuse being left on Amulya’s Facebook page, deferring the matter to DCP Central.</p>.<p class="CrossHead"><span class="bold">Movement in worry</span></p>.<p class="bodytext">Amulya’s pro-Pakistan slogans at Freedom Park on Thursday before her microphone was deactivated has proved to be a major embarrassment for the anti-CAA movement in the city.</p>.<p class="bodytext">Associates of Amulya insisted that she was trying to make a point that nobody in the anti-CAA rallies would hail a ‘long Live Pakistan’ slogan while they would do so for a ‘Long Live Hindustan’ chant.</p>.<p class="bodytext">“She is not dumb. She knew exactly what she was saying. She had a clear narrative in mind, but was interrupted before she could complete it. Her half-comments are now being taken out of context,” said Sujnan, another student-activist. “In the end, the campaign is not involved with whatever she said or intended to say. It falls on her to explain herself,” said a protest organiser.</p>
<p class="title">Hours after the arrest of student-activist Amulya Leona at Freedom Park on Thursday night, the 19-year-old girl was subjected to unprecedented abuse on social media even as the number of her Facebook followers began to multiply. </p>.<p class="bodytext">Although Leona’s account initially numbered only a few hundred followers in the days before the incident, by Friday evening, the number of followers had spiked to over 4,500 individuals. <span class="italic">DH</span> which tracked the spike during the day estimated that the number of new followers began to increase by about 15 every five minutes from 3 pm onwards. </p>.<p class="bodytext">However, these increases appeared to come with an exponential increase in the number of trolls who left nearly 1,000 angry messages on one post alone which showed a photograph of Prime Minister Narendra Modi speaking to Muslims. The caption to the post read: “Modiji loves Muslims. Modi ji loves people from all religions. It is only sanghis and idiots who hate Muslims and people from other religions.”</p>.<p class="bodytext">Among the the barrage of messages, written primarily by users with male names, were messages describing the 19-year-old as a prostitute, a terrorist, a pakistani sleeper cell agent and even mockingly as the “daughter of Sunny Leone.”</p>.<p class="bodytext">More seriously, one user offered a sum of Rs 1.20 lakh for the activist’s ‘head’.</p>.<p class="bodytext">Cyber police said they did not have any mandate to tackle the online abuse being left on Amulya’s Facebook page, deferring the matter to DCP Central.</p>.<p class="CrossHead"><span class="bold">Movement in worry</span></p>.<p class="bodytext">Amulya’s pro-Pakistan slogans at Freedom Park on Thursday before her microphone was deactivated has proved to be a major embarrassment for the anti-CAA movement in the city.</p>.<p class="bodytext">Associates of Amulya insisted that she was trying to make a point that nobody in the anti-CAA rallies would hail a ‘long Live Pakistan’ slogan while they would do so for a ‘Long Live Hindustan’ chant.</p>.<p class="bodytext">“She is not dumb. She knew exactly what she was saying. She had a clear narrative in mind, but was interrupted before she could complete it. Her half-comments are now being taken out of context,” said Sujnan, another student-activist. “In the end, the campaign is not involved with whatever she said or intended to say. It falls on her to explain herself,” said a protest organiser.</p>