Govt plans new body to crack down on child porn

The initiative comes after an expert committee constituted to prepare a roadmap for effectively tackling cyber crime submitted its report to the home ministry.

Tackling child pornography and online abuse will be the top priority of a highly sophisticated centre the government plans to set up.

The initiative comes after an expert committee constituted to prepare a roadmap for effectively tackling cyber crime submitted its report to the home ministry.

According to the recommendations of the committee, there is a need to reduce crimes against children and women, especially online abuse.

“These kinds of content and websites need to be monitored and blocked. The supporting laws need to be strengthened, parents need to be educated to monitor children’s activities in cyber space and educate children about good cyber behaviour,” the committee has said in its report.

A Rs400 crore cybercrime control hub, to be called Indian Cyber Crime Coordination Centre (IC4), will be set up to check all cyber crime, including child pornography and online abuse, as per the committee’s recommendations.

“Home Minister Rajnath Singh has already directed speedy implementation of recommendations of the committee,” an official said.

The government has taken seriously the issue of pornography and asked Internet Service Providers to block over 800 sites which had child porn content.

The Supreme Court, too, had pulled up the government for not doing enough to check child pornography.

The expert committee found India lacks centralised online reporting mechanism, inadequate infrastructure for cyber crime monitoring and investigation, besides skilled cyber professionals.

Other drawbacks include challenges related to technology and research and development, lack of citizen awareness, legal

and jurisdictional issues and lack of Standard Operating Procedure for cyber crime investigation.

The IC4 will be linked with CCTNS and NATGRID, the two databases having information related to various kinds of crime and criminals.