E-Paper
Remove non-consensual intimate images online in 24 hrs: Govt SOP
Social media must remove non-consensual intimate images within 24 hours of complaints, per new guidelines from India's IT ministry following a court directive.
Social media platforms and online intermediaries must remove or disable access to non-consensual intimate images within 24 hours of receiving a complaint, the ministry of electronics and information technology said in Standard Operating Procedures released on Tuesday.
The SOPs, published on the ministry’s website, follow an October direction from the Madras High Court while hearing a plea filed by a woman lawyer whose private images had repeatedly surfaced online. In July, the court had directed the ministry to prepare a prototype outlining what victims of image-based abuse should do.
Drawing from the Information Technology Act, 2000, the IT Rules, 2021, the Indecent Representation of Women (Prohibition) Act, 1986, and the Bhartiya Nyaya Sanhita, 2023, the procedures outline the removal process for non-consensual intimate imagery.
The SOPs apply to intermediaries including social media platforms, content-hosting services, search engines, content delivery networks, and domain name registrars. Platforms must take down flagged content within 24 hours and acknowledge the action to the complainant.
Significant social media intermediaries must deploy crawler technologies to proactively detect and remove reuploads. They are required to generate hashes—unique digital fingerprints of reported images or videos—and share them with the Indian Cybercrime Coordination Centre via the Sahyog Portal to maintain a secure “hash bank” that prevents the resurfacing of the same material.
Search engines must de-index such content from their results, while content delivery networks and domain name registrars must render it inaccessible within 24 hours. Intermediaries must also act on reuploads under new URLs within the same timeframe and keep complainants informed about takedown status.
Dhruv Garg, partner at the Indian Governance & Policy Project, said the SOPs consolidate existing obligations rather than creating a new legal regime. “The main thrust of these SOP should ideally be in publicising the remedies that victims have in quickly managing the dissemination of NCII,” he said, adding that awareness campaigns are essential for the document to be effective.
Victims can report through intermediaries’ grievance officers or report buttons, the National Cybercrime Reporting Portal (cybercrime.gov.in or dial 1930), One Stop Centres under the Ministry of Women and Child Development, or local police. If dissatisfied with an intermediary’s response, they can appeal to the Grievance Appellate Committee.
The SOPs establish coordination between Meity, the Department of Telecommunications, and the Indian Cybercrime Coordination Centre, which will act as the central point for aggregating takedown requests and maintaining the hash bank. The ministry described the procedures as an “evolving document” that may be updated over time.
