A Delhi court has highlighted the misuse of technology to target young children and awarded a 5-year jail term to a man accused of morphing a minor's images to deter similar "tech-savvy criminals to think several times" prior to committing such acts.
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New Delhi: A Delhi court has highlighted the misuse of technology to target young children and awarded a 5-year jail term to a man accused of morphing a minor's images to deter similar "tech-savvy criminals to think several times" prior to committing such acts.
The minor's images were allegedly used for pornographic purposes and she was threatened of defamation, which the court termed as cyber bullying.
Additional sessions judge Susheel Bala Dagar said, "...convict does not deserve any leniency, so that similarly placed tech-savvy criminals should think several times before committing any such crime with children." The court was hearing the case against a 34-year-old man convicted under the provisions of the Prevention of Children from Sexual Offences (POCSO) Act and Information Technology (IT) Act, besides under the penal provision for criminal intimidation.
Additional public prosecutor Yogita Kaushik Dahiya sought the maximum punishment saying the convict was found guilty of cyber bullying the child by creating a nude photograph, which was a "child sexually abusive material".
The court verdict dated December 2 expressed concerns over the rise in sexual crimes against children in the cyber world.
The court said it was established the convict was guilty of "sexting" the minor survivor and "sextortion" and he threatened to upload her morphed photo on the internet and social media platforms if she did not obey his command.
"This is one such case of image-based cyber bullying of the victim child. The perpetrator satisfied his anger and frustration by transmitting morphed sexually provocative portrayals (photos) of the victim and threatening to publicly defame the victim by misusing information or her photograph available in the public domain," it said.
The order observed it was the society’s responsibility to protect children from physiological and psychological exploitation by online sexual abusers, such as cyber stalkers and cyber bullies.
"Respect for the reputation of females, specifically female children, shows the basic civility of a society. It is a demand for justice that the award of punishment has to be in consonance with the legislative command and the discretion vested in the court," the judge said in the verdict.
The court sentenced the convict to rigorous imprisonment of five years and fined him with Rs 1 lakh under Section 67B (punishment for publishing or transmitting material depicting children in a sexually explicit act, etc., in electronic form) of the IT Act.
It further sentenced him to a five-year rigorous imprisonment and a three- year rigorous imprisonment under Sections 14 (using a child for pornographic purposes) and 12 (sexual harassment), respectively, of POCSO Act.
The man was also sentenced to one-year imprisonment under Section 506 (criminal intimidation) of the IPC.
All sentences were ordered to run concurrently.
The court awarded Rs 5 lakh compensation to the victim.
According to the FIR, the incident took place in 2016.
Notably, the court's verdict said with technologies like artificial intelligence, such crimes were bound to increase unless the courts stepped in "proactively" by taking a "hard stance to nip them in the bud".
The judge in the order suggested the government and its departments to organise workshops for spreading awareness among children on cyber crimes.
"The government and its functionaries ought to consider organising workshops in schools to enlighten the students and their parents about cyber crimes. There is a lack of general awareness amongst the masses about maintaining privacy and where and to whom to report when such crime is detected in the first instance," the order said.