"Sick Minds": Shashi Tharoor After Woman Trolled Over Her Pic With Him

Congress leader Shashi Tharoor has hit out at trolls over the online abuse of a woman who had posted a picture with him.

"Trolls should realise there are real human beings involved in their abuse. This young girl has suffered for an innocent picture taken at a reception for over a hundred people, at which I must have posed for photos with over fifty! Keep your sick minds to yourselves, trolls!," the Thiruvananthapuram MP tweeted, sharing a post put up by the woman on the hate she is facing.

The woman has said in her post that she met the Congress leader -- also a popular author -- at a literary fest and clicked a few pictures with him, like many others.

"There are no political or personal stories related to it. I have always looked up to him," she said.

"But people have started making filthy stories on the same," she said, adding that it "breaks her heart" to see how "RW people are using my pictures" for "political gains".

The woman said she had taken down her pictures with the Congress leader after the troll attack and requested others to do the same.

On the politics front, Mr Tharoor recently lost out to Mallikarjun Kharge in the contest for the Congress president post.

He has not been included in the party's list of star campaigners for the upcoming Gujarat Assembly election. The party's student wing in Gujarat had invited Mr Tharoor, known for his oratory, but the Congress leader opted out as the party leadership had not named him a star campaigner.

Congress sources, however, have denied that the senior leader was being "sidelined".