In May, a 13-year-old boy, living in the Khandeshwar area of Navi Mumbai, was booked for allegedly raping and impregnating his 15-year-old sister after they watched porn together. In November 2023, the Malad police arrested a 27-year-old delivery executive who allegedly saved phone numbers of female customers and sent them porn clips. In 2022, a 14-year-old boy was booked by the Sahar police for allegedly sexually assaulting a 10-year-old boy from his locality.
The common thread in these cases is the easy availability of pornographic material on the internet. The Free Press Journal takes a deep dive to understand the psychological impact of pornography, penal provisions to restrict its circulation, as well as measures taken by the police to curb it. The report will also try to figure out how many in India easily access porn despite several checks in place.
Dr Harish Shetty, a psychiatrist, said consumption of pornography distorts reality, promotes myths about sexuality, and leads to intimacy issues. It kills the joy of love, conversations and emotional nourishment that is important in a relationship, he said.
He explained that pornography can kindle latent psychopathic traits and provoke violence, leading to unhealthy sexual contact. These traits can even instigate those with criminal tendencies to take someone’s life, while children can go haywire and imitate the acts with other kids, added Dr Shetty.
“Open chats about sexuality, awareness about its deleterious effects and peer counselling help save a person from the ill-effects of pornography. Being in a safe space with friends, where one can be emotionally nude, can help an individual regulate their behaviour,” said Dr Shetty.
Recently, the Supreme Court held that section 15 of Protection Of Children from Sexual Offences Act and section 67B of the Information Technology (IT) Act will penalise the use of child pornography in any form, including storing and watching of such content.
India has several laws to prosecute pornography and stricter provisions against content involving child abuse. For instance, sections 294 and 295 of Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita regulate publication of obscene materials whereas section 75 deals with sexual harassment, including showing pornography to a female against her will.
Similarly, sections 67, 67A and 67B of the IT Act cover publication or transmission of material that is obscene, sexually explicit and / involves children, respectively. They have provisions of punishment ranging from three to seven years.
“We need enough deterrence against pornography as the track record of pornography-related cases is very bad. The convictions are in single digit,” said Advocate Prashant Mali, a cyber crime and privacy lawyer practising at the Bombay High Court.
The country is seeing a trend of homemade pornography where couples, mostly from rural areas, are making clips and uploading them on the internet as a side business, he said. “We can easily say that India has an unregulated underground porn industry flourishing under the nose of state governments and the Union ministry of home affairs,” he said.
“To curb the uploading, circulating, and viewing of pornography, we are implementing several measures, including monitoring and surveillance, deep investigations, support to victims, collaboration with internet service providers (ISP) and cyber awareness campaigns,” said Datta Nalawade, deputy commissioner of police (DCP, detection).
Whenever a report is obtained about pornography content, removal requests are reported to social media platforms concerned, ISPs and hosts for blocking and suspending the clip, he added.
According to the police, easily available porn on social media exposes the youth to unrealistic portrayals of intimacy, leading to skewed expectations about sexual and compulsive behaviour. Frequent consumption can contribute to anxiety, depression and body image issues, said the police.
Law agencies said that blocking content from circulation on the internet is actually a difficult job for the authorities. Law enforcement authorities prevent distribution of such material by blocking domain names but the websites bounce back by changing the domain name. Additionally, the availability of free virtual private networks makes it easy for consumers to browse such content.
Ritesh Bhatia, cyber crime investigator and data privacy professional, said blocking a pornography website is like installing a firewall. “We insert keywords that we need to block and it will block websites with names related to those keywords, but these websites come up again and again with different domain names,” he said.
Cyber pornography depicting women
2,251: Total cases filed in 2022
450: Highest cases in Uttar Pradesh
Odisha, Karnataka States with over 200 cases
75: Lowest cases in Maharashtra
Cyber pornography depicting children
1,171: Total cases in 2022
235: Highest cases in Karnataka
MP, Delhi, Chhattisgarh, Rajasthan States with over 100 cases
54: Lowest cases in Maharashtra
Source: National Crime Records Bureau
