Gurmehar Kaur was given police protection after tweets threatened her with rape.
Exactly a week after
Gurmehar Kaur's post on ABVP took the country by storm and brought bucket-loads of criticism on her, the 20-year-old deactivated her Facebook account for a few hours this evening. Earlier today, Ms Kaur said she
would not participate in the evening's protest march against hooliganism by Delhi University Students, saying she had taken "all she could".
The Facebook posts of the soldier's daughter -- one expressing her views on student group ABVP and the other on her father's death, blaming "war" -- had brought forth a barrage of criticism on social media. The comments had often been brutal and she said she had even received threats of rape. The young student has since been given police protection.
The people who appeared to criticise her posts had ranged from cricketing icon
Virender Sehwag to wrestler
Phogat sisters Geeta and Babita, Union Minister Kiren Rijiju and BJP lawmaker Pratap Simha. The debate got even more heated as former Union minister
Shashi Tharoor and former Rajya Sabha member
Javed Akhtar weighed in in her favour.
This morning, in a series of tweets, Ms Kaur said, "I'm withdrawing from the campaign. Congratulations everyone. I request to be left alone. I said what I had to say..."
"To anyone questioning my courage and bravery. I've shown more than enough," she further said. A tweet later in the evening read:
The ABVP or Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad, a BJP-linked student group accused of setting off violent clashes at Ramjas College over an invitation to Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) student Umar Khalid, said they were against the relentless trolling Ms Kaur was facing.
"We are absolutely against the kind of threats Gurmehar's been getting. So, we have written a letter of complaint to the police, and we urge strict and swift action against those who issued the threat," said an ABVP spokesperson.