It could have been me !

On Thursday morning, I got a shock. Staring up from the front pages of newspapers was a news report about my new Facebook friend, arrested on charges of rape and videotaping the act. I read through the details and there was no doubt that it was the same man who popped up on my social networking site account a few months ago.


Now that I recall, he had been trying exactly the same ploy on me that he allegedly tried on his victim. The rape survivor said that the man had asked her out to lunch, tricked her into going to his south Delhi home, raped her and then told her he had the rape videotaped. If she tried to speak out, the clip would be released. The papers said there might be more such victims.


I could easily have been one of those victims. This girl met the accused online, and so did I. He invited her out, and he had asked me for a date, too. Repeatedly. What if I had given in?


The man appeared on my Facebook page one day with just a line, "Hey, how are you doing?" I accepted his friend request as we had a mutual facebook friend and he claimed that he was from the Northeast, as I am. Though a stranger, he started chatting with me as if we were close friends. During our first chat, he asked me out to coffee and promised a ride in his "swanky sports car". He was a charmer, and I might have fallen for it had I not been in a relationship. He invited me to a party at a popular nightclub in a five star hotel.


"Hey, call me when you reach the party," he said. The next moment, his mobile number was in the chat box. Telling him that I have a boyfriend did not faze him. Check out this message: "Oh! You know what, you'll find me interesting. Why don't we meet and get to know each other. I am more interesting than your boyfriend. And does he have a sports car like mine, nah right?"

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