Five years after the “Bois Locker Room” Instagram scandal triggered outrage in Delhi, a similar controversy has emerged in Bengaluru with a now-deleted Instagram page, titled metro_chicks, drawing ire for sharing non-consensual videos of women commuting on the city’s metro.
Thousands of women, who travelled by the metro daily to avoid the traffic congestion in the IT capital of the world, were unaware that prying cameras were watching, recording inside the coaches, and uploading their videos on Instagram, without their consent.
For these women, daily commutes to their offices and homes turned into content, without permission, for nearly 6,000 followers.
The tagline of the page—“Finding beautiful girls on Namma Metro.” The videos were posted with captions. The comments were disabled.
This week the Banashankari police registered an FIR and launched an investigation after the account surfaced online and attracted outrage. “An FIR has been booked in this regard at Banashankari PS and investigation is taken up,” said Lokesh B. Jagalasar, deputy commissioner of police (south), on Tuesday.
The police registered a suo motu case under Section 67 of the IT Act (transmission of obscene material electronically) and Section 78 (2) of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita (stalking).
The Instagram page, which has been deleted after the outrage, had 13 such clips before deleting them.
Its associated Telegram channel, Speedy_Weedy123, had over 1,100 subscribers before it vanished.
“There is a pervert travelling in @OfficialBMRCL Bengaluru metro trains and capturing videos of women secretly and sharing them on Instagram. Please find him and punish him…” read the X post that flagged the issue.
Singer Chinmayi Sripaada summed up the public sentiment: “There is someone who is running an Instagram account secretly recording women on Bengaluru Metro Trains and there are over 5000 followers to this page. This is a country that says 'Women are Goddesses' it seems. LOL”
BJP MP P.C. Mohan called it what it is: a crime. “An Instagram account is secretly filming women on Namma Metro, and shockingly, 5,000 people are following it. It’s a blatant violation of privacy and dignity, not just creepy but a serious crime. @BlrCityPolice, take immediate action.”
An X user said, “As a woman who uses the metro every day, this is absolutely horrifying to me! @OfficialBMRCL please take note!”
Another wrote, “What is happening here? There is really no place safe anymore.”
Reports of women feeling unsafe inside the Bengaluru metro are not new. In 2023, many women commuters said to the Bangalore Mirror that overcrowding and lack of surveillance led to a feeling of insecurity.
In 2020, a similar controversy, related to one Instagram page, erupted in Delhi, after "Bois Locker Room" came to notice.
According to the BBC, members of the group shared images of their classmates and other underage girls without their knowledge or consent with comments ranging from body shaming to jokes on sexual assault and rape.
The screenshots were shared on WhatsApp and other social media platforms. The police took a teenager into custody.
In January 2024, Mark Zuckerberg faced questions at a Senate hearing, where senators pressed him about non consensual sexually explicit images of children on Instagram. The video of a flustered Zuckerberg is still widely available online.
And yet, incidents like metro_chicks suggest little has changed.
