The person who had left the chilling message was a 20-year-old Indian student reaching out from a foreign university. He described to Bagwe how a deeply humiliating video of him had been uploaded by someone on a porn site and he had no idea how to get it taken down. The youngster said he would have to kill himself now, as he didn’t know how to extricate himself from the mess he found himself in.

Bagwe says, “I was “s''t scared, because I had no way of getting in touch with the boy’s family or friends to tell them about his intention. But, sheer bravado had me respond to the boy, requesting just 24 hours to get his video taken down.” That done, Bagwe feverishly framed a plea to the site operators to have the video deleted. “I couldn’t sleep all night because I was so scared. I kept checking every 30 minutes. Finally, within 12 hours, the video was gone. I cannot describe the relief and joy,” Bagwe says, adding that relaying this wonderful piece of news to the youngster would remain among the high points of his life.

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On October 16, Bagwe decided to re-upload a Reel on Instagram on his solutions to unique problems. He didn’t think much of it, considering that in its earlier avatar uploaded three months ago, he used to get a mere three-four requests a month for help. “These were mostly by the LGBTQiA+ community,” said Bagwe, “because it is easier to locate the source of such revenge videos in a tight group such as ours.”

When Bagwe woke up on October 17, his followers had rocketed from 1.30 lakh to 1.60 lakh. By that evening, the number had reached four lakh. As he is a social media influencer too, these numbers meant everything.

But, when Bagwe checked his DMs, what he heard and read blew him away, he says. “There were voice messages from desperate women and men begging for help. I began to listen to each one. The helplessness and despair broke my heart,” Bagwe said. “I can’t forget the hushed whisper of one young girl saying, ‘Meri help kijiye, nahin toh abbu mujhe maar dalenge’.”

So, what is Bagwe’s modus operandi? “I wish to make it very clear that I am not a hacker, ethical or otherwise. I only use the tools available to everyone if they looked in the right place.” 

Bagwe makes use of grievance redressal mechanisms of social media platforms, drawing their attention to the objectionable content and asking them to delete it. The process is tedious but is known to get results. Meta, for example, has a team that deliberates on such requests and even an appellate board if the first decision is not satisfactory to the user. 

“I do, however, have one strong weapon in my arsenal, in that I use some strong key words to get the administrators of these sites and apps to address my grievance immediately. The words are a trade secret, but my success rate is quite high,” he says.

Every case is special, Bagwe says, and he does not ignore anyone who has reached out for help. Bagwe says he has managed to help over 100 people so far, but there are over 8,000 requests pending in his Instagram DM inbox. He reveals that Instagram, Telegram and Facebook are all slow to respond, but the right words in the plea help get their attention. WhatsApp, however, is notoriously hard to reach, which is where the cyber police could help, but they seem to lack the will.

“This help comes at a personal price, though,” says Bagwe, “People also leave abuse because sometimes the resolution is not as fast as they would like. I find that it deeply affects my mental health and I have to take regular breaks in order to allow myself to wind down from the emotional battering. But, I do not resent it. I see this as giving back to society.”

He adds that he will soon be creating a Reel showing people how they could get the videos taken down themselves. 

“Porn sites have a feature for viewers to themselves delete objectionable content. Other social media sites, though, need some work and patience,” he signs off. 

8K+
No. of requests pending in Bagwe’s inbox