Kerala cities figure on top ten child porn surfing list
- Amritsar top the list while Delhi and Lucknow followed
- Not a single case was spotted from Dimapur, Agra, Barrackpore and Kanpur
- Viewing or sharing of child porn is a non-bailable offence attracting seven years imprisonment and ₹10 lakh fine
FollowThree cities in Kerala figures among the 10 worst cities sharing and surfing child sexual abuse material (CSAM). A recent government data showed that Alappuzha and Thiruvananthapuram came third and fourth in the list while Thrissur came tenth.
Amritsar took top place with more than 4.3 lakh searches for 'files of interest', the code used for child porn. Data was analysed for six months between July 1, 2016, and January 15, 2017. Delhi came second, followed by Lucknow, Times of India reports.
Cities like Dimapur, Agra, Barrackpore and Kanpur came clean with not even a single case of CSAM surfing during the period. However, data is limited to IP addresses originating in India, but surfing with the help of The Onion Router (TOR) or rerouting IP address or for masking actual IP is likely to happen. In such cases, it appears that the search is being conducted from another country and hence cannot be tracked.
The issue with this is that online child porn is directly related to child abuse. "Every child abuse video includes a victim, and hence both are directly related to each other. Other than abusing children to make abusive videos, such material is also used to trap new victims. CSAM is readily available, and sharing of such content increased with the advancement of technology," Vidya Reddy of Tulir Centre for the Prevention and Healing of Child Sexual Abuse said.
The issue came to light after American linguistics expert James Kirk Jones was arrested for possessing and sharing nearly 30, 000 child pornography files. He used to share files using GigaTribe, a file sharing network and was in contact with over 490 like-minded people.
Though child pornography is shared in large numbers, only a small number of cases are being reported. Though several facilities like the hotline for reporting CSAM are in operation, only limited number of cases come to light. National Crime Records Bureau registered about 1, 540 cases in 2015-16. It was the Interpol that helped grab Jones.
Most persons do not even understand that watching and downloading child porn. "Watching or sharing such material is a non-bailable offence that will attract up to seven years of imprisonment along with ₹10 lakh penalty. However, international nature of such crimes makes it difficult to trace offenders.
