The Narendra Modi government has roped in international police agency Interpol in a bid to crack down on sexual abuse and pornography of children amid a surge in photographs and videos on the internet showing kids being sexually exploited.

EXPLOSION IN CHILD PORNOGRAPHY

Experts say the advent of digital cameras and camcorders has fueled an explosion in such material available online. Last year, 96 reports of children being sexually exploited in internet imagery were reported in India - a rise of 140 per cent from 2014, according to National Crimes Records Bureau data.

"IT ministry has approved a formal agreement wherein Department of Telecommunications will obtain list maintained by INTERPOL containing domain names hosting child sexual abuse contents and act as an appropriate agency of the government to direct its licensee ISPs to expeditiously remove or disable access to material found in violation of the IT Act," the Centre said in an affidavit submitted to the Supreme Court.

"Further the mechanism to obtain the list containing domain names hosting contents of child sexual abuse is being worked out in consultation with the CBI." The top court asked the Centre in February to suggest ways to ban child pornography in all forms in the country saying that the nation cannot "afford to carry on any experiment" in the name of "liberty or freedom of speech and expression".

INTERPOL A MAJOR ASSET

The SC was hearing PILs filed by Indore-based advocate Kamlesh Vaswani and Supreme Court Women Lawyers Association seeking a direction to the government to adopt various measures towards improvement in the effectiveness of blocking child pornography on the Internet and to eliminate it.

RP Saxena, co-ordinator of the cyber Laws and e-security group of the government, said in the affidavit that a meeting was convened recently to seek cooperation and support from Internet Service Providers, which in turn can play an important role by blocking or disabling the lists containing domain names/URLs/website addresses hosting child pornography content.

Interpol is a major source of getting access to such lists of websites containing child sexual abuse. The agency maintains a regular update of the "worst" of such sites. Interpol has been tasked by the UN General Assembly in 2009 to maintain and disseminate to the national central bureaus a worldwide list of URLs, which contains these websites that publish the most severe child abuse material. Ordering a crackdown against child porn, the SC had said that one needs to draw a distinct line between art and obscenity and child pornography cannot be justified in the name of freedom of speech and expression.

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