Cracking the whip on child pornography and trafficking, the Maharashtra police has arrested 105 people and registered 213 FIRs in the last 18 months across the state. Recently, a 29-year-old chef from Goa has been arrested in connection with this.
As per the statistics provided by the Maharashtra Cyber Department, the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) has provided 15,255 tips to the state police. Statistics shows in the last 18 months, Pune received 5,699 tip-offs, followed by Mumbai 4,496, Thane 364 and Nagpur 302. Nagpur has registered the maximum cases, which was 38, followed by Pune (16), Pimpri-Chinchwad (15), Nashi City (13) and Mumbai (11).
Speaking about Operation Blackface, Superintendent of Police (Maharashtra Cyber), Sanjay Shintre, said, “Many initiatives are undertaken by the Maharashtra Cyber Department to curb cyber-crime cases. One of the most heinous crimes is sexual abuse of children and child pornography. In order to curb this, the Maharashtra Cyber Department initiated Operation Blackface in December 2019.
In June 2019, a US-based NGO, National Centre for Missing and Exploited Children's (NCMEC), had signed an agreement with the NCRB to receive information on child pornography, exploitation and other crimes on children.
The NCRB appointed a nodal officer in each state and Union Territories. In Maharashtra, the nodal officer is IGP (Maharashtra Cyber). “The NCMEC keeps an eye on social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter and Instagram to track IP addresses of child pornographers. This is shared with the NCRB, which takes action. This has led to successfully cracking down on child pornographers,” said a home department official.
The police also asked parents to be alert when children surf the internet. “Spend time online together so that children pick up appropriate online behaviour from you. The computer/tab that children use should be kept in a place where parents can watch. Monitor any time spent on smartphones or tablets and look for patterns,” said a police official.
