Guidelines, SOPs soon to check child pornography, removal of images of rapes from websites

The Home Ministry will soon issue detailed guidelines and standard operating procedures (SoPs) to eliminate child pornography, rape and gang rape imageries, videos and sites on content hosting platforms and other applications, officials said.

The move came after the Supreme Court directed the central government to frame guidelines and SoPs in this regard.

The guidelines and SoPs to end child pornography, rape and gang rape imageries, videos and sites on content hosting platforms and other applications are expected to come up within next two weeks, a home ministry official said.

The home ministry is also holding regular meetings with social media platforms like Facebook, YouTube, WhatsApp and Twitter to check spread of hate messages and rumours inciting violence and crimes against women and child pornography.

The government is putting in place a mechanism to identify, disclose name and prosecute anyone found involved in disseminating fake news creating social tension or pornographic contents inciting sex crimes, another official said.

The Supreme Court on Tuesday said the Centre might frame guidelines or standard operating procedure (SoP) to eliminate online videos and images of child pornography and rape.

"The government of India may frame the necessary guidelines/SoP 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," the court said in its order.

The court has posted the matter for further hearing in February next year.

The top court had on December 6 said that the Centre and internet giants, including Google, Microsoft and Facebook, were in agreement that videos of rape, child pornography and objectionable material were needed to be "stamped out".