The National Commission for Protection of Child Rights (NCPCR) has written to Google, WhatsApp and Twitter, highlighting the increased traffic on child pornography from India through these platforms since the lockdown began.
It has asked the companies to share information on the number of complaints regarding Child Sexual Abuse Material (CSAM) and pornographic material received on their platforms and also asked them to provide details of the policy they are following in dealing with both issues in India.
The NCPCR has also asked the three platforms "to provide details of the policy to ensure that such material is not available/accessible to the children on your platform.''
Raman K. Gaur, senior consultant, NCPCR, said that the commission had taken cognisance of research by the non-government organisation India Child Protectio Fund (ICPF), which had highlighted that "Online child porn traffic from India has increased by 95 per cent between March 24 and 26, as compared to average traffic before the lockdown. Further, it is also mentioned therein that the millions of paedophiles have migrated online, making the internet extremely unsafe for children.''
The ICPF is run by Nobel laureate Kailash Satyarthi's son, Bhuwan Ribhu.
The commission said that it subsequently did its own independent inquiry on the availability of online Child Sexual Abuse Material (CSAM) and noticed that pornographic material is accessible through the apps available on Google Play Store. "By mere downloading [of] these apps from the platform, the user can access such material,'' writes Gaur in his letter addressed to Rahul Jain, Google India. Similarly, Gaur has written to Rachit Ranjan of WhatsApp India and M. Kaul of Twitter India, telling them that while conducting an independent inquiry the "Commission noticed that there are encrypted WhatsApp groups and CSAM is rampantly present in these groups. The links to these groups were found to be propagated by various handles on Twitter. The Commission is of the view that propagating links of these Whatsapp groups on Twitter handles is a serious matter.''
The NCPCR has sent the three companies the list of apps, WhatsApp groups and Twitter handles that are used for CSAM.
Additionally, NCPCR also wrote to Twitter saying that as per its standard terms and conditions, a person of 13 years or above was eligible to open a Twitter account, "If you are allowing children at the age of 13 to open an account on Twitter, the Commission is of the view that you can't allow other users to publish, propagate pornographic material, links, etc on Twitter. "
This is enabling the reach/accessibility of the children to such material and hence, is a serious matter, they said.
Further, there is also the possibility that CSAM is also available on these apps making it a much graver issue.
The commission has also expressed concern that children themselves could be accessing such material on the internet.
The use of children for pornographic purpose and storage of such material for commercial purpose is an offence under Section 13 to 15 of the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (POCSO) Act, 2012. Further, child pornography and pornographic material are prohibited under Section 67 of IT Act, 2000.
Section 67A makes publication, transmission and causing to be transmitted and published any material containing sexually explicit acts or conduct illegal. Section 67B of IT Act, 2000 makes publishing, transmitting, viewing or downloading child pornography as illegal. Similarly, Section 292 & 293 of the Indian Penal Code prohibits sale, distribution, etc. of obscene materials.
NCPCR said that Section 19 of POCSO Act, 2012 makes it mandatory to report POCSO offences and therefore it has reported and forwarded its investigation report to the Ministry of Home Affairs. For it to probe further into this racket, it has sought information from the three platforms by April 30.
