The Supreme Court has asked the Union Home Ministry to create a portal for lodging complaints against rape videos and videos containing child pornography being circulated through social media networks.
A bench comprising Justices Madan B Lokur and Uday Umesh Lalit has directed that such a portal be ready on or before January 10 and has asked for a status report to be given on January 8.
The bench passed the order while hearing a suo motu case initiated three years ago on basis of a letter sent by an NGO from Hyderabad called ‘Prajwala’ which pointed out that such videos were a serious threat to the safety of women and children.
Advocate Aparna Bhat who has appeared for ‘Prajwala’, requested the court to also direct the Centre to provide the necessary publicity so as to ensure awareness amongst citizens and to encourage them to file complaints
She further added that the identity of the complainants must be kept protected or the portal must allow anonymous complaints.
Appearing on behalf of the home ministry and the CBI, advocate R Balasubramanian informed the court that he would advise the Centre to accept Bhat’s request.
SC Criticises Centre For Delay
The bench noted that the matter has been pending for long and that a CBI affidavit had assured the court in 2015 of a portal being prepared. It added it was “high time” that the portal be made ready by the government and made available to the public.
The SC censured the Centre’s “casual approach” on an important issue.
The bench further noted that the status report supplied by the Centre was not really a status report as it just contained comments on the order passed by the court, and directed it to provide a detailed status report.
Case Initiated After Suo Motu Cognisance Of A NGO Letter
In February 2015, ‘Prajwala’ had sent a letter to the CJI along with two rape videos that were being circulated on social media channels. The NGO noted that the videos indicated that rape was being committed “with impunity” with offenders having the audacity to record the crime and flaunt it publicly.
The SC bench took suo motu cognisance of Prajwala’s letter , converted it into a criminal writ petition, and asked the CBI to investigate the circulation of rape videos on social media.
It also initiated a process for developing a mechanism to tackle the issue.
In its investigation, the CBI was able to identify six further rape clips available on social media sites. It announced a cash prize of Rs 1 lakh for the identification of each of the accused seen in the different clips.
In one of the cases, the UP police arrested a few accused in Sitapur but SC asked the CBI to continue its investigation.
In November last year, the court was informed by the Centre that it was planning on setting up an unit for investigating crimes against women. It later also informed the bench that it had given approval for setting up a cyber-crime prevention division and had approved a budget of Rs. 196 crore for a period of three years for the same.
