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An online campaign publishing the photographs, videos and personal details of women who took part in protests at Jantar Mantar, New Delhi, drew attention on 1 August 2026.
Those targeted reported harassment including rape and death threats after phone numbers and home addresses were circulated.
The protests, against examination paper leaks, ran from 20 June to 25 July 2026.
Doxxing is not defined or separately criminalised anywhere in Indian law.
Victims must rely on a patchwork of provisions under the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita and the Information Technology Act.
Doxxing is the publication of someone's private personal information — home address, phone number, workplace, family details — in order to intimidate, shame or expose them to harassment by others. Indian law has no offence of that name, and the difficulty is structural rather than accidental. The problem divides into two parts. The publication of the information is legally uncertain: much of it may be technically available elsewhere, the person publishing it may not themselves make any threat, and no provision squarely criminalises the act of assembling and broadcasting it. The threats and harassment that follow are far easier to prosecute, under provisions covering criminal intimidation, stalking, obscenity or outraging modesty — but they are committed by a diffuse crowd of anonymous accounts rather than by the person who set the process in motion. The result is that the individual who creates the danger is often the hardest to reach, while the law aims at those who act on it.
Simple Analogy: It is like painting a target on someone's door and stepping back. Everything that follows is a crime; the painting itself sits in a gap.
Provides offences for criminal intimidation, stalking, defamation and acts intended to insult the modesty of a woman, which cover the harassment that follows doxxing rather than the disclosure itself.
Section 66E addresses violation of privacy through capturing or publishing images of a private area; Section 67 covers publishing obscene material in electronic form.
Governs the processing of personal data, though its application to individuals publishing another person's details is limited by its exemptions.
Impose obligations on intermediaries to remove specified unlawful content on receipt of a valid complaint or order, the main practical route to takedown.
Held privacy to be a fundamental right under Article 21, the constitutional foundation for any claim against unauthorised disclosure of personal information.
GS Paper II > Fundamental rights, privacy; GS Paper III > Cyber security and misuse of social media
General Awareness > Polity and legal awareness
Publishing someone's private personal information in order to intimidate, shame or expose them to harassment.
The criminal code that replaced the Indian Penal Code, containing the offences most often invoked in doxxing cases.
The provision penalising violation of privacy by capturing or publishing images of a private area without consent.
The framework under which platforms must remove unlawful content to retain safe-harbour protection.
The Supreme Court decision holding privacy to be a fundamental right under Article 21.