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NCRB data shows rise in child sex abuse cases, conference held to discuss issue
Speaking at the conference, NCRB director Vivek Gogia said: “The data pertaining to CSAM may not reflect the total number of cases”.
India’s top police officials, the relevant union ministries, states, civil society, and representatives of international organizations and internet media companies met in March in Delhi to discuss a spike in child sexual abuse material (CSAM) cases in the country.
On Wednesday, the UK prosecuted a paedophile, Mathew Smith, in a child pornography racket that has India links.
At least 969 cases pertaining to the online transmission of CSAM were registered by the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB), but this is just the tip of the iceberg, officials pointed out at the first “National Conference on CSAM”, organised by the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) on March 2-3. This number was 805 in 2021, 842 in 2020 and just 164 in 2019, according to NCRB.
The minutes of the meeting of the conference were released recently and have been reviewed by HT.
Speaking at the conference, NCRB director Vivek Gogia said: “The data pertaining to CSAM may not reflect the total number of cases”. He added there is an increasing trend in the number of cases reported owing to heightened awareness among law enforcement agencies (LEAs), expansion of digital technology and intervention by media and civil society.
Gogia added that India accessed United States’ NCMEC (National Center for Missing and Exploited Children) for data on CSAM, which are shared with the concerned states and UTs through the National Cybercrime Reporting Portal for further action.
Over 4 million cyber tipline reports have been shared with the concerned states/UTs for taking necessary action. Many of these reports are related to child sexual abuse material online.
OP Singh, chief executive officer of India Child Protection Fund and retired Indian Police Service (IPS) officer said, “There are three variables pertaining to sexual abuse of children -- anti-social trait in the offender, a sexual interest in children and situational factors such as access to children. The forms of online child sexual abuse include sextortion, grooming, and self-generated live streaming of CSAM. With the increase in the number of active internet users, the extent of the problem has become alarming”.
Perpetrators of online child sexual abuse and exploitation use social media, live streaming, and messaging apps, from Facebook to Instagram to Snapchat, to Tik Tok to Skype to Zoom, to target children.
Highlighting the problem in tackling CSAM, Singh said public reporting of circulation of such material is very low and there is no system of automatic electronic monitoring. “We also do not have a national database of CSAM with hash values of known CSAM which can be blocked by the intermediaries. Also, NCRB data does not reflect the ground reality. Bottlenecks in quickly blocking the material and quickly prosecuting the perpetrators must be removed to deal with this problem.”
Some of the key recommendations that emerged in the conference were to replace the term “child pornography” with “child sexual exploitation and abuse”, send an SMS to every mobile user through telecom service providers every quarter or month, sensitizing them on the issue, developing standard operating procedures (SOPs) and checklist for all stakeholders such as mobile operators, content providers, app developers, public broadcasters, app stores, etc and setting up a ‘Child Cyber Protection Centre’ as a single point centre for collaborating with stakeholders such as lawmakers, policymakers, tech providers, telecom and Internet Service Providers.
