New Delhi: The Indian Army has slammed social media trolls for picking on a group of Jammu and Kashmir school girls who were a part of a tour conducted by them. In a statement issued today, the Army said that it is up to the civil society to decide whether the girls should be subjected to such trauma.
The tour, which was organised by the Indian Army, provided an opportunity to 30 school girls from Jammu and Kashmir to interact with President Pranab Mukherjee. Some of these girls had never left the valley and were elated to be a part of this trip.
All was well until comments regarding the girls on Facebook started getting really ugly. The comments spilling hatred against the girls ranged from the way they dressed and went on to the extent of calling them Pakistani agents.
Lt Gen Satish Dua, General Officer Commanding (GoC) of Srinagar-based 15 Corps stood up for the girls slamming the haters.
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“When we set out to do the tour, there was no such thing except for a couple of statements. But thereafter, the kind of hate-mail that generated on social media... it is for the society to take it upon themselves that on one hand if they have their opinions, so do these children or their parents and their schools. Some of the comments were so low that I don't even want to speak on them. So, it is for the civil society to see whether you should subject such young girls to such trauma,” he said.
As for the girls, they were clearly amazed by the entire experience. One of them said, “The train experience was awesome. We also visited many places which we could only have dreamt of. We went to IIT Delhi, Moulana Azad Medical College, Taj Mahal, Rashtrapati Bhavan and Parliament. It was great.”
But the venom spewed on social media did not leave them unaffected. “We were frustrated after coming to know how people were reacting to this tour. It is a disappointing and traumatising situation for us to handle. We didn't know our pictures were uploaded on FB and we inquired about it from the Army officials immediately. They promised to remove our pictures from FB and also assured us that they would probe the incident,” one of the girls said.
