On the third day, the girl came forward. Her name was Ishita. She was nineteen. She had filed a police complaint alongside Anirban—the two of them, together, against the person who had taken what was private and made it public. They had been dating for eight months. The video was consensual. The leak was not.

The statement was brave. It was also futile.

And he thought about the word “viral.” How it had once meant something that spread life. Now it meant something that destroyed it, one share at a time.