'Substantial Progress Made To Prevent Circulation Of Child Porn, Rape Videos On Social Media': Supreme Court Closes PIL

The Supreme Court on Tuesday closed the Public Interest Litigation (PIL) filed for controlling indiscriminate circulation of child pornography and videos of gang rape and rape through WhatsApp and other social media after the expert committee constituted by the Court for the matter, submitted its report on how it proposes to address the issue. 

The Court had initiated this suo motu PIL in 2015 based on a letter sent by an NGO named Prajwala to the then CJI HL Dattu.

A division bench of Justice B.R. Gavai and Justice Vikram Nath noted that the expert committee constituted by it, which included representatives of various intermediaries such as Facebook and Whatsapp, representatives from the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology and the Amicus Curiae appointed by the Court had reached a consensus on the larger issue and had made substantial progress in addressing it. The Court was of the view that, what was left to be monitored, were technical aspects of implementation, which could be done by the Union.

“We find that on larger issues there has been consensus, and substantial progress has been made to prevent the publishing of videos pertaining to child pornography, gang rape and rape. This is not an adversarial litigation and the committee, with the assistance of the amicus and the counsel for the petitioners and the representatives of the intermediaries have come to a satisfactory conclusion. No doubt they are non-consensual issues on which a resolution was not possible.” the Court stated in its order. 

An expert committee by the Court was headed by the Additional Secretary, Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology. Other members of the committee included representatives of various intermediaries such as Facebook and WhatsApp, the Director General CERT (Computer Emergency Response Team), Joint Secretary of Ministry of Home Affairs and Group Coordinator (Cyber Laws), Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology, the petitioner and the amicus curiae appointed by the Apex Court. The Court had been monitoring the issue from time to time.

Adv. Aparna Bhat appearing for the petitioner submitted that some legal issues had to be addressed, which require orders from the Court. She submitted that issues of non-compliance by the intermediaries still exist. She informed the Court that the Ministry had asked the intermediaries to ensure that for certain explicit content being searched there would be no auto complete and that a warning would be issued when a person searches for such content. Bhat submitted that the intermediaries are yet to comply with this.

She pointed out that if one were to search for ‘Child Porn’ on Google, a warning is given only in the ‘All’ section. But other verticals on the same page, like under ‘videos’ or ‘images’, there is no such warning, she pointed out. The same problem persists with Facebook, she stated. She also informed the Court that WhatsApp was asked to have an in-app reporting button. ‘But today, if you use that button, there is no response. How can you call this compliance?’

Justice Vikram Nath asked the intermediaries ‘You have the technology to delete such videos. How are they still available?’ The petitioner is only pointing out what has not been done and what can be done. ‘You are capable of doing it and you are not doing it.’ he said.

Referring to videos of the Manipur violence, the petitioner submitted that explicit videos have surfaced online of which the Apex Court has taken cognizance. ‘They were being circulated. Circulation was possible. If these filters were actually of good quality, those videos would not have surfaced.’ she argued.

In this regard Justice Gavai said ‘the Manipur video went viral, it was available for a long time.’

Adv. N S Nappinai, appointed as Amicus Curiae by the Court in the matter, submitted that on the larger issue, there has been a lot of progress. ‘The smaller issue can be solved by ensuring that there is a methodology for reports that are given to be responded to, so that the complainant can know whether WhatsApp has taken action and then there is no reason to burden the Police system or court system. If action is not taken, that is when they have to come to the court.’ she stated.

Sr. Adv. Aravind Datar appeared for Facebook (now Meta), Sr. Adv. Kapil Sibal appeared for Whatsapp.

Sr. Adv. Aravind Datar submitted that the Expert Committee had met 14 times since the Apex Court directed it to meet in its order dated 29.11.2022. He submitted that most of the issues in matter have been sorted out and what is remaining are some technical aspects. ‘After 14 meetings and calling it a non-adversarial litigation it is unfortunate that she is saying this.’ He said about the petitioner’s submissions.

‘It is not correct to say we are not taking action. We have been taking extensive action’ he submitted. Datar stated that there was compliance on most aspects and that only a few technical aspects were left to be fixed. “We have set up a grievance committee, we are using artificial intelligence to identify child pornography and it is immediately stopped”, he informed the Court. He also submitted that in India, approximately 99% percent of such explicit content has been acted on by Meta, before it was even reported. ‘We are not perfect. Billions of messages go through Facebook per day’, he said. He suggested that further non-compliance could monitored by the Ministry.

Justice Gavai in this regard remarked ‘It would’ve been a different matter, if there was no will on their part, but the report itself shows that they have will, but there might be certain things beyond their control. Let the government examine this. The government is there to monitor.’ he stated.

The Top Court while closing the proceedings stated:

“…substantial issues have been resolved. We find that it will not be necessary for this Court to further monitor this issue, as various technical concerns are involved which could not be monitored by this Court. If any of the parties are aggrieved by the non-compliance of any of the provisions, they are always at the liberty to bring it to the notice of the Union of India, which shall take into consideration, these aspects and make an attempt to resolve this issue. If issues still remain unresolved, the parties are at liberty to approach this Court to seek appropriate reliefs.” 

Case Title: In Re: Prajwala Letter Dated 18.2.2015 Videos Of Sexual Violence And Recommendations, SMW(CRL.) NO. 3/2015

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