Supreme Court issues notice to DoT on how to block child porn in India

Even as technology bigwigs like Google and Microsoft are sitting up to take note and combat child sex abuse on the Internet, the Supreme Court of India (SC) has issues a notice to the Department of Telecom (DoT), seeking a response on how to block child pornography.

The SC had impressed upon the centre that it was to take steps in order to block pornographic websites, especially those that deal in child porn. A bench headed by Justice BS Chauhan reportedly said, “Nothing, you have to do it,” in response to Additional Solicitor General KV Viswanathan seeking time to file response on a plea for blocking sites like these in India. Earlier in July, the apex court had granted four weeks time to the centre in order to be able to devise a mechanism in order to block such sites.

The SC demands to know how to block child porn in the country

The central government had expressed its inability to block all international pornographic websites in India thanks to multiple technological and legal constraints. The Additional Solicitor General, Indira Jaisingh, told a bench headed by Chief Justics Altamas Kabir that the government was having trouble with international content thanks to lack of adequate legal provisions and technological issues like the position of the servers. The bench had advised the government to work with various ministries in July and is now demanding an answer.

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The latest case comes in relation to a PIL filed by Indore-based advocate Kamlesh Vaswani who said that while it was not an offence to watch pornographic videos, they should be banned since they are a major cause for crime against women. The petition, at the time of filing, said that over 20 crore porn videos are freely available in the market and are accessible to kids easily.

“The petitioner most respectfully submits that most of the offences committed against women/girls/children are fuelled by pornography. The worrying issue is the severity and gravity of the images are increasing. It is a matter of serious concern that prepubescent children are being raped,” it said. “At best, the IPC only recognises the offences of obscenity, kidnapping, abduction, and other related offences which are not sufficient to tackle the issue of pornography, and such videos,” it read, suggesting that sharing and even watching obscene videos be made a non-bailable and cognizable offence.

(With inputs from agencies)