"Sick minds": Shashi Tharoor responds to trolls attacks after woman uploads pic with him

New Delhi: Shashi Tharoor, Congress party leader, has called out trolls for harassing a woman who uploaded a photo of them together online.

"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 said in her post that she saw the Congress leader, who is also a well-known author, at a literary festival and that she and several other people took some selfies with him.

"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".

After the troll attack, the woman claimed to have removed her photos of herself with the Congress leader and asked other people to do the same.

On the political front, Tharoor recently lost the race to become Congress president to Mallikarjun Kharge.

He is not on the party's list of prominent campaigners for the impending Gujarat Assembly election. Mr Tharoor, who is noted for his oratory as much for his writings, had been approached by the party's student wing in Gujarat, but the Congress leader declined reportedly because the party leadership had not designated him a star campaigner.

Sources within the Congress have refuted claims that the senior leader was being "sidelined."