SC Forms Panel To Ensure Gang Rape Videos Are Removed From Internet

The Supreme Court today constituted a high level committee comprising of Centre’s Information Technology officials who are to coordinate with internet giants like Facebook, Microsoft and Google to remove rape, gang rape and child pornography videos from the internet

Ajay Kumar, the Additional Secretary in the Information Technology Ministry of the Central government will coordinate with Facebook, Microsoft, Google.

Bench of Justice Madan B Lokur and Justice U U Lalit passed the following order: “The committee will assist and advise the court on the feasibility of ensuring that videos of rapes, gangrapes and child pornography are not available to the general public. They just cannot be in public domain It is very clear. Some sort of consensus has to be arrived at to ensure that it shall not be available in the public domain”.

This came on a PIL filed by social activist Sunitha Krishnan, founder of the NGO Prajwala, who has rescued and rehabilitated more than 10,000 rape victims.

She had sought such a register given the steep rise in the number of rapes and shockingly videos of such incidents being uploaded on social media.

Krishnan, who received 200 such videos from victims and forwarded them to the SC bench that ordered a CBI probe, told Mail Today: “From most videos, it is clear that this is not the offender’s first rape. The ease with which the men go about the act... while one performs the heinous act, other two hold her legs tight and cover her mouth… while another man films it. In another video, spanning 8.5 minutes, there is a gang rape of a girl by five culprits who are shown smiling, cracking jokes, recording the act and taking photos while they go about sexually assaulting the victim.”

The database will likely include personal details of the convicted including their residential address, fingerprints, DNA samples, and identity card information like the PAN card with tax ID and Aadhaar card that contains biometric information, minister of state for home Kiren Rijiju told Parliament in April.

The MHA has also said that an agency – Indian Cyber Crime Coordination Committee (ICCCC) – with pan-India jurisdiction to probe such clips and take action against the criminals is also being constituted at a cost of nearly Rs 200 crore.