In an upcoming book, former BJP social media cell volunteer Sadhvi Khosla reveals how they were asked to target minorities, Aamir Khan and journalists.On October 2 last year, Sadhvi Khosla, then a volunteer with the BJP’s social media unit, stared at the reflection on her cell phone screen, and wondered about the person she had become. Her grandfather was a freedom fighter, while she had simply degenerated into a troll. As various BJP-run Whatsapp groups she had subscribed to spewed hatred at Mahatma Gandhi, Khosla claims she started introspecting. “I felt guilty. I asked myself what I had got myself into. Gandhi is a hero I have grown up with. It is not the BJP’s stated position to abuse him, but that is how the ideology works,” Khosla, who is holidaying abroad, told Mirror over phone yesterday.Khosla’s story forms a major part of a recently released book by journalist Swati Chaturvedi. ‘I am a Troll’, published by Juggernaut, reveals the dark side of BJP’s social media unit, which, Khosla describes in the book, as a “never-ending drip feed of hate and bigotry.”Chaturvedi, herself a victim of right-wing trolls, writes in her book, “Who are these trolls with their false names and fake photographs? Where do they come from? Why do they do what they do? Do they act as an organised whole or work spontaneously? Are they just fans of the BJP and Prime Minister Modi or is there a more formal link with the party?One of the many startling revelations Chaturvedi in her book makes is about how the BJP social media cell carried on a concerted campaign against actor Aamir Khan after he remarked about “India’s growing tolerance” in November last year, and ensured that he was dropped by shopping website SnapDeal as its brand ambassador.Khosla, who currently heads a knowledge processing company in Gurgaon, told Mirror that she was in the US in 2013, when she got a call from then Prime Ministerial candidate Narendra Modi to join the party’s social media cell. “I had taken a sabbatical for 6 months but it got extended. We worked for 18-hours a day tweeting and organising Chai Par Charcha,” she said. Khosla added that she was drawn to the BJP because of its agenda of change. “The UPA government was getting arrogant. Like the rest I, too, had my reasons, I was looking for a change for better.. better jobs, better economy,” she said. She said “change” was being advocated by many, including Anna Hazare, but she chose Modi.She says in the book that her enthusiasm dimmed when she was asked, along with other members of the social media cell, to target minorities and journalists, among others. (In a post on Juggernaut’s blog, Chaturvedi writes: “…I was shaken when I discovered the secret “IT shakhas” and the depth of the rigorous planning of social media operations…I was also taken aback by the sheer ordinariness of the trolls. Here were people abusing, slandering and indulging in communal incitement, making rape and death threats, yet treating it like a 9-to-5 call centre job.”)Then, Khosla found the man – Arvind Gupta heads the BJP’s social media unit -- she worked for 18 hours a day turn a deaf ear to her tweets seeking support for war on drugs in Punjab. “BJP is part of the government there, I must have sent 5,000 tweets on Punjab and on the Akalis’ involvement in drug rackets. There was silence,” she said.Even as her candid confessions to Chaturvedi make headlines, Khosla is reticent about revealing too many details. She refused to talk about her colleagues in the social media cell, or who she used to report to. She is equally wary of implicating the party. “Let’s stick to facts, it is not that BJP social media cell did anything to those who did not follow instructions. Like the Aamir Khan campaign, it was up to me whether to follow the instructions or not,” she said.Khosla also said just because she grew disenchanted with the BJP doesn’t mean that her compatriots’ fervour, too, had dimmed.“To each his own. I felt guilty of being part of the hate campaign, because I realised that unity of our nation is more necessary than a bullet train,” she said.She also said that the book merely builds on what has been in the public domain for long.“It is wrong to say that I approached someone to vent my disillusionment. I had even tweeted the grab of Arvind Gupta’s Whatsapp message to me on the ‘Aamir Khan campaign’,” she said.She added that she will support Modi whenever he takes a decision in national interest. “I support demonetisation. If he does anything for the good of the nation, I will support Modi. But I do not support Modi’s silence when Amir Khan was attacked, when (Mohammed) Akhlaq was killed,” she said. Does she feel anxious about having come out in the open about her disenchantment with the BJP? “Let’s see what happens. If anyone does anything to me then I will be proved all the more right.”