New helpline to lodge plaints on child porn

A centralised helpline portal has been created to crackdown on child pornography and videos depicting women abuse. Anyone who comes across a video of the same can directly report the same to the portal. The Ministry of Home Affairs launched a centralised online portal, www.cyberpolice.gov.in, and helpline number ‘155260’ to receive complaints pertaining to child pornography and rape/gangrape (CP/RGR) content.

Sunitha Krishnan, the founder of Prajwala, an NGO who started a ‘Shame the rapist’ campaign earlier this year, was instrumental in this move.

She started this campaign when she received videos of a gang rape through WhatsApp, in which the accused were seen gloating about their crime. She received another 10 videos depicting abuse in just 24 hours from the beginning of her campaign.

This step is expected to curtail the innumerable videos that are circulated on social media showing indecent images but remain unreported. There have been cases where perpetrators film the act of rape against a woman and then uploading it.

The Supreme Court had also earlier asked Yahoo, Facebook and Google to block videos depicting sexual violence against children. The new security policy of Youtube that was released in November last is to proactively restrict content unsuitable for children less than the age of 12 years which shows any kind of abuse.

Chand Basha, inspector of social media, Cyber Crimes, Hyderabad says, “Instead of waiting for users to comment or report, if the individual websites starts monitoring their content, we can see a broader change regarding this issue. Once the database and reach increases, it becomes difficult to monitor. People should also begin to report obscene videos as it could lead them to being taken down.”

Venkat Swamy, an official from the women and child welfare department, says, “The ministry of Women and Child Development had announced that amendments should Representation of Women (Prohibition) Act, 1986 (IRWA) which will help in curbing obscene images on social media platforms. New forms of communication need to come under the act and there needs to be stricter action. Child pornography is largely available in the dark web for even 100 rupees which is highly disturbing. People should make use of the centre’s decision and report it,” he said.