Child pornography addicts on the prowl, police begin crackdown

Haridwar: Cops in Haridwar are looking for the person who has been posting child pornography on the social networking website – Facebook. Haridwar police have registered a case against an unidentified person who has uploaded such obscene content involving children on the website.

The move by the cops came after Centre’s managed National Cyber Crime Reporting Portal received a complaint from Facebook regarding the objectionable content.

“The preliminary investigation shows that the obscene post was uploaded from Haridwar city and a case has been registered against the unknown person under the IT act and other relevant sections of the Indian Penal Code,” said the officer investigating the case.

This is not the first incident from the city as a similar FIR was registered in February this year.

On Sunday, a youth from Kochi who was involved in circulating child pornographic content through online media was arrested. Jinu Baby, 31, a native of Thodupuzha, who is residing on Azad Road in Kaloor was arrested followed by a raid conducted as part of Operation P-Hunt, a special police drive to curb similar activities. The police conducted simultaneous raids at three locations in the city. Three cases were also registered.

According to the latest report by an NGO India Child Protection Fund (ICPF), consumption of child pornography content in India has spiked by 95 per cent during the lockdown.

As per the data provided by online data monitoring websites, there has been an increase in searches for terms like “child porn,” “sexy child” and “teen sex videos,” the report said citing data from pornography website Pornhub.

Child pornography refers to any content that depicts sexually explicit activities involving a child. Visual depictions include photographs, videos, digital or computer-generated images indistinguishable from an actual minor.