Several legislations have been made by our government to make special provisions regarding children and to reduce child pornography. Some of them are Indian Penal Code, Communication Decency Act, Information technology Act, Data Protection Act, Criminal Procedure Code, and the POCSO Act. But the biggest problem with the enforcement of child pornography laws is the problem of identification of accused, victims and the perpetrators of crime. Huge amount of pornographic material is available on numerous porn websites on internet. There is nobody to complain about the production, distribution and circulation of pornography on internet. The perpetrator can be situated anywhere in the world. The most difficult thing is to identify the culprit. As the net can be accessed from any part of the globe, the field is wide open foe hackers and pedophiles.
The problem of jurisdiction is also an important problem in the world of laws dealing with child pornography especially when the platform is internet. India is a signatory to various international laws on the protection of children, but implementation of these laws often lack. Under section 75 of Information Technology Act, 2000, any person or persons irrespective of their nationalities who commit offence under the Information Technology Act outside India provided the act or conduct constituting the offence or contravention involves computer, computer systems, or computer networks located in India, can be prosecuted by Indian Courts. This provision attempts to resolve the problem of jurisdiction related to internet pornography but this provision does not serve any useful purpose in the case where India does not extratradition treaty with the citizen of a country whose citizen has to be prosecuted under this Act. Due to the presence of numerous laws dealing with pornography, confusion arises in relation with their applicability.
There is a huge challenge in controlling this menace due to various reasons like the way internet is structured, lack of regulations, differences in legislations and so on. A careful assessment of the harms of child pornography needs to be undertaken by the government to provide a stronger legislation.
Supreme Court Justice V.S. Sirpurkar had emphasized on the point of creating special courts for cases related to cyber crime which would be decorated by trained judges in cyber law. These trained judges would be better able to appreciate the evidence. These special courts will also serve as a tool for easy enforcement of internet pornography laws. The Bombay High Court Committee on Protecting Children from Online Pornography, suggested following recommendations in their Report on Protecting Children from Online Pornography:
- Blocking of sites;
- Preventing minors from accessing unsuitable material from Cyber Cafes;
- Preventing the publication or propagation of pornography from Cyber Cafes.
Aakansha Bharadwaj
I'm a student of B.A. LL.B. from Yashwantrao Chavan Law College, Pune. As a law student, I'm interested in different areas of law such as Constitutional law, Human Rights law and Family law. I'm also interested in research and have participated in various national and international seminars. My other interests include reading and writing poetry.