Mumbai: Cyber Officials Identify 16 Social Media Handles For Uploading Child Pornography

Mumbai: The Jalgaon cyber crime police have registered a case and identified 16 social media account users for allegedly uploading child pornography. According to police sources, the cyber department in Mumbai had recently shared information about the child pornography content with the Jalgaon cyber crime police.

The department received the information from the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA), informed by the US-based NGO, the National Centre for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC).

The NCMEC, established by the United States Congress, has a centralised reporting system through which internet service providers and intermediaries like Facebook and YouTube can report people circulating images of child pornography. The National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) has an agreement with NCMEC to receive information on child pornography and exploitation.

The shared information indicated that the suspects involved in circulating child pornography were from the Jalgaon area. This information included usernames, URL details, IP addresses, and linked email IDs of the suspects.

Sources stated that this pornographic content was circulated through Instagram or Facebook. The police have registered a case under section 67B (punishment for publishing or transmitting material depicting children in sexually explicit acts, etc., in electronic form) of the Information Technology Act and have launched an investigation to trace the suspects.

To curb the menace of sharing child sexual abuse material online, the Maharashtra cyber department initiated Operation Blackface in December 2019. In 2022, it launched an initiative to train more than 300 police officers to understand and investigate cybercrimes involving phishing, cryptocurrency-related money laundering, darknet activities, UPI and net banking scams, and online child pornography.