Cyberbullying: Can the Law Keep Up?

Cyberbullying has become a widespread and often fatal form of online harm in India, ranging from trolling and morphed images to doxxing and non-consensual sharing of private content. This piece examines India's existing legal framework — primarily the Information Technology Act, 2000 and provisions under the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, 2023 — to assess whether current laws adequately address cyberbullying, which remains scattered across statutes rather than governed by a single, unified law. It highlights key gaps such as slow enforcement, under-resourced cyber cells, and emerging harms like AI-generated abuse and deepfakes that existing provisions were never designed for. The piece concludes that legal reform alone is insufficient without stronger digital literacy and platform accountability.