Supreme Court reserves judgment on child pornography
NEW DELHI: The Supreme Court on Friday reserved its order on a Madras high court decision that merely watching child pornography is not an offence, quashing a criminal case against a 28-yearold man last month for downloading and watching pornographic content involving children on his mobile phone.
A bench headed by CJI Dhananjaya Y Chandrachud said, “The high court has said watching pornography is not an offence but with child being used in pornography it will be an offence.” The Madras HC order of March 11 was challenged by a coalition of NGOs, Just Rights for Children Alliance, contending that the judgment gave an impression that “mere downloading and possession of child pornography will not face prosecution”, which would be detrimental to the well-being of children and encourage child pornography. Before reserving its order, the bench, also comprising justice JB Pardiwala, said, “The question we have to consider is whether it is involuntary on his (accused) part as he claims he got it through WhatsApp, did not modify it, and he was not aware of it.”
The accused was charged in the year 2019 under Section 14 of the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (Pocso) Act, 2012 and the Information Technology Act, 2000. The FIR was lodged under Section 14 of the Pocso Act prescribing punishment for using a child for pornographic purposes and Section 67B of the IT Act.
The high court said, “Since he has not used a child or children for pornographic purposes, at best, it can only be construed as a moral decay on part of the accused person.”
The lawyer for the accused told the court that he had no intention to download or store the videos as he received it in a WhatsApp group and it remained in his mobile phone.
Senior advocate HS Phoolka appearing along with advocate
Jagjit Singh Chabra for the petitioner said, “Intention is to be proved at the time of trial. According to the information received from US-based National Centre for Missing and Exploited Children (NC-MEC), having a collaboration with Indian government, the accused had been watching child pornography since the last two years and is a habitual offender.”
On April 5, the top court agreed to examine the issue and termed the HC order “atrocious”.