Police file status report on immoral trafficking

Police have filed a status report in the Madras High Court, detailing the cases registered under the Immoral Traffic Prevention Act since 2013 to July 2016.
It states that more than 2,500 human traffickers, including women involved in online prostitution in the city, have been arrested under the Act during the period.
The details were filed by the ADGP, CB-CID yesterday before a bench comprising Chief Justice Sanjay Kishan Kaul and Justice R Mahadevan as per an earlier direction of the court on a PIL filed by one Y Akbar Ahmed.
The petitioner submitted that he chanced upon a website while surfing the Internet andfound some pornographic content with nude and semi-nude pictures of women.

Contending that online pornographic content could adversely affect the society, especially the youth, the petitioner said, "Due to the growing free sex culture through cyber pornography, strong steps should be taken to check online porn content."
He contended that pornography had a bad effect on the youth as well as adults, leading to various social and medical problems as well as incidents of crime.

The petitioner submitted that section 67 of the Information and Technology Act, 2000 made it clear that watching obscene material, pornography on computer or mobile phone was a crime, attracting severe punishment to the producers, distributors and viewers of such sites.

In his status report, the ADGP submitted that since 2013 to July 2016, about 2,500 human traffickers, including women involved in online prostitution in the city, were arrested under the Immoral Traffic Prevention Act and 100 among them were detained under the Goondas Act.
The bench, which found fault with the prosecution for not handing over the advance copy of the report to the petitioner before the hearing of the case, asked it to file the compliance report three days before the next hearing and serve the advance copy on the petitioner failing which the authorities would have to pay Rs 10,000 as cost.

The bench posted the matter for further hearing on November 18.