It started with a homophobic post on social media. Dr. Prasad Raj Dandekar, a radiation oncologist based in Mumbai, was scrolling through his Facebook feed one evening several years ago when he saw a colleague had posted an anti-gay comment. “I commented saying, ‘This isn’t appropriate; maybe you don’t mean it,’” Dandekar told the Thomson Reuters Foundation. Instead of apologising, his colleague then launched into a series of verbal attacks, claiming all homosexuals were criminals who belonged in jail. “Maybe this incident came out of ignorance. Maybe he doesn’t know better,” Dandekar said he thought at the time. “And if that is the case, this can be changed.”