Prepare guidelines to block rape videos: SC to govt

The Supreme Court on Tuesday asked the Union government to prepare and implement guidelines to eliminate child pornography, rape and gang rape imageries, videos through various intermediaries like Google, YouTube, Facebook, Microsoft and WhatsApp in two weeks.

A bench of Justices Madan B Lokur and U U Lalit told Additional Solicitor General, appearing for the Ministry of Home Affairs, that necessary steps should be taken to block such websites and evidence may be collected by the law enforcement agencies for action against them.

After taking into record an affidavit by the Centre, the court said, “the government of India may frame the necessary guidelines or the standard operating procedure and implement them within two weeks so as to eliminate child pornography, rape and gang rape imageries, videos and sites in content hosting platforms and other applications.”

In a suo motu petition arising out of a letter by Hyderabad-based NGO 'Prajwala' in 2015 for taking measures to check uploading of rape or gang rape videos, the Centre indicated that there are certain actions required to be taken by the intermediaries, including setting up of proactive monitoring tools for auto-deletion of unlawful content by deploying artificial intelligence based tools.

It favoured actions like deployment of trusted flaggers for identifying and deletion of unlawful content, setting up of 24X7 mechanism for dealing with requisitions of law enforcement agencies, appointment of India based contact officer and escalation officers (with name, designation, email, mobile number) and prompt disposal of requisitions of law enforcement agencies to remove unlawful contents.

The Home Affairs Ministry has developed and launched a cybercrime portal and also started an all India awareness campaigns on radio for promoting its use for reporting the cyber crimes against women and children.