16-Yr-Old Boy Moves SC Seeking Complete Ban On Online Porn [Read Affidavit]

The latest petitioner before the Supreme Court seeking a complete ban on online porn is a 16-year-old class 12 student Akash Narwala from Kota, Rajasthan.

Disgusted by his schoolmates’ addiction to sex videos, Narwala knocked on the Supreme Court’s doors through lawyer Kamlesh Vaswani and Vijay Panjwani seeking to become party to a plea filed by the advocates in 2013 in which the court is issuing periodic directions.

The case comes against the backdrop of the Centre blocking hundreds of adult websites in 2015 to prevent porn becoming a “social nuisance”, sparking a debate about censorship and freedom in the world’s largest democracy.  The ban was partially lifted days later following a wave of criticism.

“Even kids studying in class four, five, six and seven in my school are watching porn on their mobile and they want to watch them frequently. I am witness to it. Young minds are getting corrupted. It is having a damaging and upsetting effect on them,” Narwala, a student of Vidhyanjali Academy in Kota city and also a social activist, says Narwala.

Said his affidavit: “I have observed in my school and also outside of school that teenagers of my age have easy access to porn by way of mobile phones.Due to internet connectivity of mobile phones,hard core porn sites are available throughout the day and night and children in their teenage are most affected and thus their moral values get degraded and children are diverted and distracted in ways which are not good for their studies and also for their general overall development”.

“Easy accessibility of porn now-a-days in India through internet is a major cause of increasing sex crimes against women and even minor girls of this country. Most porn videos show women in such poor light,objectifying and disgracing them.There have been instances where boys before the age of eighteen years have indulged in sex crimes,rapes and molestation because of the unlimited exposure to porn through the internet.Juvenile delinquency has increased because of easy exposure of porn and then these juveniles have to be sent to Juvenile shelter homes for rehabilitation”, it said.

Millions of Indians access pornography on their smartphones or by inserting memory chips containing racy videos that are easily available at low prices, say reports.  Some internet companies say it is impossible to block all such sites as many of the servers that host them are outside India. Also, the sites can be accessed through proxy servers.

“Mobile accessibility and surfeit of porn on the internet is the primary reason. Young people are turning to the internet to learn about sex and relationships. Sometimes they are frequently stumbling across porn, often unintentionally,” says Narwala’s affidavit in court.

In February, a woman whose marriage was on the rocks due to her husband’s alleged porn addiction also become party to the PIL in the top court, seeking a complete ban on online porn.

“I being a teenager and a young man myself am of the firm opinion that the easy availability of porn through the internet in this country is a serious impediment in the progress of this nation as a whole new generation of youth are adversely affected leading to perversion of youth, loss of moral and spiritual values among them which if not checked can lead to total lack of productivity, rise in sex crimes, matrimonial disputes at a later stage, loss of family values and a state of doom would then set in leading to total and complete disaster,” says the teenager’s affidavit.

“Delinquent behavior and substance use is also widely prevalent among my colleagues addicted to porn.”

India has the second-largest population of Internet users in the world, about 450 million, trailing only China.

“Pornography exposure by teenagers through the internet teaches objectification. That is, it teaches little boys to see girls and women as objects, and not as human beings, having value. The same could be said for little girls as well, about seeing themselves as objects and not understanding personal worth,” reads Narwala’s affidavit.

The apex court earlier asked the Centre to find out “ways and means” to block “blue films” on the internet, saying obscenity, which is a crime under Indian law, “cannot be allowed to be perpetuated”. The court is also exploring the possibility of banning watching of pornographic material in any form at public places and has also sought the view of the government on if it can be made a crime.

The Centre said it only favours banning child pornography sites and not “going beyond”, considering a citizen's right to privacy, and also because it does not want to be “moral policing”. But the court directed it to “develop a mechanism” for blocking allporn sites with the help of IT experts and service providers.

Read the Affidavit here.