NEW DELHI: The CBI has said that it’s difficult to curb violent cyber pornography because of the huge demand from India’s "domineering male population" that has an "insatiable lust and penchant for salacious material, including violence against women."

The CBI added that India was vulnerable to frequent cyber-attacks by cross-border anti-national elements because of its “huge market potential”. This huge demand makes internet and content providers continually move from one blocked website to another, making detection difficult, the investigating agency told the Supreme Court on Thursday.

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The agency made these statements in an affidavit urging the Supreme Court to make the CBI the only pan-India agency that will investigate cybersex offences and prosecute offenders. The agency bolstered its pitch by saying that because most of the offenders operate in foreign locations, the CBI, which has the “highest experience and expertise in pursuing trans-jurisdictional investigations”, is the best agency to investigate cybersex crimes.

The agency suggested that like in the US, an officer from the CBI be posted with internet service providers/social networking sites to facilitate and expedite the prevention, detection and prosecution of such crimes. CBI officers with specialized training in cyber crime, should be posted with Google, YouTube, Facebook, WhatsApp, Hike, Bing (Microsoft), Yahoo and other popular sites," it told the SC . In the US, FBI officers are posted at large internet firms to help speed up requests for data and for the protection and transfer of evidence for investigation and prosecution.

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Violent and sexually explicit material depicting women and children in demeaning ways are crimes against the nation that need to be handled by a centralized mechanism, particularly the CBI, the agency said.

"Rape and gang rape represent the oldest and longest continuing instances of a criminal man's inhumanity on woman. Committing such abhorrent crimes, recording them and disseminating them across the world through internet-enabled media serve to titillate and indirectly embolden other males to commit such heinous crimes. These not only add to the misery of existing victims but also endanger and threaten the safety of other innocent women and children," the CBI’s affidavit said.

Times View

It’s bizarre that the CBI should be making such sweeping generalisations about Indian men and their sexual proclivities. It is one thing for individuals to have such prejudices or opinions, it is quite another to elevate it to an institutional position and that too in a legal document. This affidavit hardly inspires confidence in the investigating agency’s ability to deal with what is by any yardstick an extremely ticklish social issue.