ALAPPUZHA: The arrest of American linguistics expert James Kirk Jones last week for possessing and sharing nearly 30,000 files of child pornography had jolted Hyderabad. Recent government data shows the rot runs deeper: alongside metros, many of India's tier-II cities are among the worst lot on surfing and sharing of child sexual abuse material (CSAM).Amritsar, Lucknow, Alappuzha and Thrissur were among the 10 worst cities where CSAM was shared on multiple occasions in the past six months. Amritsar took top place with more than 4.3 lakh “files of interest" - code for child porn - shared between July 1, 2016 and January 15, 2017. Delhi was second, followed by Lucknow.“There are cities like Agra, Kanpur, Barrackpore and Dimapur where we had not seen any surfing for CSAM until six months ago. Here too there is significant growth," said a government source. The data is limited to IP addresses originating in the country, but there are several instances of surfers using TOR (The Onion Router) to mask or reroute their IP address, making it appear as if they are based in another country, to avoid being tracked. Online child porn is directly linked to offline child abuse. “For every child porn video, there is a child abuse victim somewhere. Not only are children abused to make the video, but the same material is then used to groom new victims," said Vidya Reddy from Tulir Centre for the Prevention and Healing of Child Sexual Abuse (CPHCSA).“The accessibility and affordability of technology has ensured that child sexual abuse material is more easily available than ever before and there is a lot more peer-to peer sharing than before,“ she added. In fact, Jones was also using a peer-to-peer, file-sharing network, GigaTribe, to stay in contact with 490 'like-minded' friends.Despite the large volume of child porn being shared through private social media groups, reporting remains abysmally low. Mumbai-based NGO Aarambh India , which started a hotline for people to report CSAM, received only 211 complaints in the last four months. And the National Crime Records Bureau has registered just about 1,540 cases of online child sexual abuse in 2015-16. If not for an Interpol alert, Jones too would have flown under the radar.In fact, according to cyber-crime law expert Prashant Mali, few people even realize that watching or downloading child porn is a crime, which of course it is. “Under the present laws watching or sharing such material is a non-bailable offence attracting up to 7 years imprisonment and a Rs 10 lakh penalty," says Mali.A major hurdle in the detection of online CSAM is the international nature of the crime.“A person could ostensibly view porn in India, which may have its server in Russia, its pay-site in Scotland and be hosted in Austria," says Reddy of Tulir.