After news broke of Ketan Agarwal’s alleged murder by his fiancée, Siya Goyal, filmmaker-actor Rahul Ravindran refused to categorise it as a systemic issue men face. That’s all it took for trolls to unleash their wrath on him and his wife, singer Chinmayi Sripaada, with some even wishing death on their 3-year-old children. While the filmmaker-actor quit X (formerly Twitter) over it, Chinmayi has been slamming the trolls.
Chinmayi Sripaada slams trolls wishing death on her kids
Chinmayi posted a 7-minute-long video on X about the online abuse she and her family have been facing for years. The recent one is trolls wishing death on their 3-year-old son. “Rahul’s tolerance hit a breaking point the moment he saw this particular tweet, which said he is going to pray for the death of my son. And he was calling more people to his bhajana mandali (assembly of people) to wish for the death of my son. This was only because they were not able to control their emotions or their anger,” she said.
The singer also spoke about rape culture, misogyny, sexual harassment and the growing amount of hate on social media. She said that abusive behaviour has become normal in online spaces, but to drag children is crossing limits. Ending the video, she addressed those who targeted her twins, Shravas and Driptah and said, “If you ever abuse my children, I’m going to wish nothing but horror, a very long life and a horrific life at that.”
Chinmayi Sripaada makes it clear she won’t stand it
On Wednesday, Chinmayi also posted screenshots of the kind of messages trolls have been sending the family, writing, “Some Telugu Social media users have been wishing death on my kids because they are ‘Anti Feminist’ and hate women (with a voice) in general. My husband left Twitter a few days ago after he got a tweet from a male(?) or a female (?) who said “Let’s all pray together that Rahul’s son must die.”
She added, “We have twins – 3 years old. A boy and a girl. Because I keep calling this out and they get support from MRAs and incels, propaganda continues for hate on my children for which I WILL Respond in the same tone. People like this, people who support people like this need to be deleted here. Someone who harbors this amount of violence against children is no less than a sociopath and I dont wish them healing. I wish they delete.”
Last month, Rahul also spoke out against the targeted hate on their children. “Maybe I am overreacting. Maybe it’s somehow my fault.. maybe my kids and I deserve this hate. But I am done with this app. I’ve been wanting out for a while,” he wrote. “I didn’t like the guy I was for half hour after I read that tweet. I didn’t like my thoughts. And I am too fiercely self respecting to let something have power over me,” he wrote, stating that he’s deleting X from his phone.