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At the end of July, a 15-year-old girl folded her hands, apologised to India, and released a video recording of it. She said she was ashamed and could not look at herself. She said it was her first and last mistake. She had shouted an obscenity about the prime minister at a student protest in Delhi.

A police complaint had already been registered against her in Noida, Uttar Pradesh. It carried her home address. Strangers began turning up at her house. She was threatened over the phone with rape. Police came to the house twice in one day. She and her mother have moved three times since.

The young girl is one of more than half a dozen women and girls picked out from protest footage this fortnight and pursued across Instagram and X. One is a yoga instructor who has lost most of her clients. Another is a widow who taught tuitions and has lost the work.

The night before her apology, Prime Minister Narendra Modi posted a video on Instagram. Vile things had been said at Jantar Mantar about him and about his late mother, he said, and he wished to forgive the young people who had said them. Mistakes happen when one is young. Abuse never solves anything.

Forgiveness runs one way.........

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