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The Special Police Unit for Women and Children (SPUWAC) has forwarded 1,197 leads on online sexual abuse of minors and child pornography to district units for action during 2025, leading to the registration of 60 FIRs, official data shows. According to Delhi Police data, from January 1 to December 19 this year, 1,197 Delhi-specific inputs from the US-based National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC) led to the registration of 60 FIRs related to child pornography. This marks a nearly 56 per cent decline compared to 2024, when 136 FIRs were registered based on 1,809 leads forwarded to district units, the data suggests. In 2025, SPUWAC received 10,151 inputs related to child pornography, through referrals from the NCMEC. Of these, 106 were referred back to NCMEC after it was found that they did not pertain to India, officials said. Another 6,022 leads were transferred to other states after verification revealed these incidents were outside Delhi Police jurisdiction, th
An NGO has called for legal action against OTT platforms for broadcasting sexually-explicit content, contending that such programmes are disrupting India's social fabric. Save Culture, Save Bharat Foundation, founded by former information commissioner Uday Mahurkar, also claimed to have filed a complaint with the Mumbai Police against the promoters of the OTT platform ALTT for disseminating explicit content. In a statement, Mahurkar criticised OTT platforms for making sexually-explicit and harmful content openly accessible to viewers. He claimed that access to sexually-perverted content and pornography has emerged as a major cause behind rape cases in the country. The Delhi-based NGO contended that OTT platforms violate several Indian laws, including the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (POCSO) Act, Information Technology Act, Indecent Representation of Women (Prohibition) Act and various sections of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita (BNS). "If left unchecked, such content ..
Instagram said it's deploying new new tools to protect young people and combat sexual extortion, including a feature that will automatically blur nudity in direct messages. The social media platform said in a blog post Thursday that it's testing out the new features as part of its campaign to fight sexual scams and other forms of image abuse, and to make it tougher for criminals to contact teens. Sexual extortion, or sextortion, involves persuading a person to send explicit photos online and then threatening to make the images public unless the victim pays money or engages in sexual favours. Recent high-profile cases include two Nigerian brothers who pleaded guilty to sexually extorting teen boys and young men in Michigan, including one who took his own life, and a Virginia sheriff's deputy who sexually extorted and kidnapped a 15-year-old girl. Instagram and other social media companies have faced growing criticism for not doing enough to protect young people. Mark Zuckerberg, the
New Delhi, 6 January An ad hoc committee of the Rajya Sabha met executives from online social media platforms Google, Twitter and ShareChat, as also the HERD Foundation, on the "alarming issue of pornography on social media and its effect on children and society as a whole". According to a person present, the MPs asked the companies about ways to curb child pornography on their respective platforms. The meeting was attended by Rahul Jain, the India manager for public policy at Google; Twitter India policy head Mahima Kaul; Berges Malu, head of public policy and policy communications at Indian language content platform ShareChat; and Amol Deshmukh and Suchika Gupta of HERD Foundation. Another person aware of the discussion said one of the executives suggested something on the lines of the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act in America. That law is designed to limit the collection and use of personal information about children by operators of internet services and websites. The ...