Stalking is not love

"Do you perceive that someone, an unwilling person, is following you? Do you receive many anonymous calls from someone or many people? Do you think that someone knows many such things about you that you did not even share with anyone? If the answer of any or all the above questions is/are 'yes', it indicates that you are being stalked."

What is Stalking? It is a forceful communication, between two people, which becomes a cause of threat or fear. This communication might be direct or via electronic means. If someone is frequently following you, watching you, gathering information about you, calling you, emailing you, sending enforced gifts or flowers, harassing you or snatching your mental serenity, it is all considered as stalking. Usually sending messages is not considered illegal, but if it delivers to an unwilling recipient, who feels the fear of safety, or undergoes any emotional distress, then it is considered illegal.

“I am scared of being alone.” “Why is he calling me? I don’t want to talk to him.” “From where did he locate my contact?” “This message is disgusting.” “I am scared of going out."

In simple words, stalking means to put someone deliberately into a reluctance place or situation. In my book You Can't Draw My Destiny, one can feel the fear of the victim. how she tarted started scaring of her own mobile phone; how she stopped going college. Well, now let's understand what is the mentality of stalker.

What is the psychology behind the stalking? There are two kinds of stalkers, psychotic and non-psychotic. A psychotic stalker might be suffering from any mental decease, but a non-psychotic stalker might influence with various psychological factors such as anger, hostility, refutation, obsession, jealousy, dependency, or accused by others. In most of the cases, the stalker has no bad intentions towards a victim, but he wants to satisfy himself by achieving his longing that cannot be fulfilled due to any of his personal reasons; the reasons might be his personality, social restrictions or anything else. Stalkers have a mistaken belief that another person loves them, or they need to rescue the person. They frequently or undesirably disturb the entire life of the person with whom they have no relationship (or no longer have). Stalker’s false believes thoroughly affects the victim’s daily life. Sometimes, it becomes necessary to escape from the stalker; sometimes, the victim might need to change her residence, office or phone number, and sometimes the victim can feel to suicide as well. I clearly describe the mentality of both victim and stalker in my book You Can't Draw My Destiny 

Is there any law against stalking? Prior to 2013, In India, there was no law against stalking, but in 2013, there was an amendment to the Indian panel code. Section 354D was added in criminal law act 2013, in which stalking is added as a criminal offence and is defined as “If a man is following or contacting a woman, despite a clear indication of disinterest by the woman, or monitoring her using the internet or by electronic communication. The man committing the offence of stalking would be liable for imprisonment up to three years for the first offence and shall be liable for fine too. For any subsequent conviction would be liable for imprisonment up to five years with fine.”

What safety steps you should take? You have to take care only of few things:

•  Stop communicating with the stalker. Don’t receive his calls or reply his messages.
•  Don’t delete his messages or call recordings. Let it save as the evidence.
•  Don’t post all information about where are you or where you have planned to go, on social sites.
• Try to choose a safe and crowd route to move out and if it is not possible then don’t go alone at least.
•  Always remind an emergency number so that whenever you feel trouble, you can call for help.
•  If you feel like you are stressed because of any person’s calls, messages, emails or gifts; don’t delay, please go to the police and raise a FIR. Don’t forget to take a copy of FIR and name of officer-in-charge. 

It is not the time to be scared. It is time to face and to raise your voice. I hope the information* will be helpful for all of you.

*(The information is collected by multiple websites, and consulted by a criminal lawyer Mr. Bhawani Deen Yadav)