Mumbai: The Antop Hill police have booked a man for allegedly sharing a child pornographic video on a social media platform. The man identified as Bashir Shaikh, who is yet to be arrested in the case has been booked a year after he shared prohibited content, said police. He has been booked after state cyber wing Maharashtra Cyber shared a tipline with the police asking them to take penal action against the accused following which he has been booked under the relevant sections of the Information Technology act.
Recently the Maharashtra Cyber had provided a tipline to Antop Hill police station and asked them to take necessary penal action against the culprit. In the tipline, a child pornographic video uploaded on a popular photo-sharing app was provided. The video was uploaded back in June 2020, the Internet Protocol (IP) address through which the video was uploaded was also provided in the tipline.
After it was revealed that the video was uploaded by Shaikh, a resident of Antop Hill, the police registered an offense. He has been booked under the relevant sections of publishing or transmitting material depicting children in the sexually explicit act of the Information Technology act. Senior inspector of Antop Hill police station, Prashant Raje confirmed the registration of the offense.
To fight the menace of child pornography, Maharashtra Cyber had in 2019 launched the operation Blackface, since then, many cases related to child pornography have been registered in the state.
Interpol had also provided software called 'Crawler' to the state police which is helping them to track down such content uploaded online.
The unique software has a built-in algorithm that continuously searches keywords related to child pornography and alerts law enforcement agencies. The tipline with the video details and the IP address used to access such contents was also provided for further action. Crawler also has features such as detecting nudity in images and videos and age recognition through facial structure, said police.
