Government to take action on child porn sting

NEW DELHI: The Union Home Ministry has taken cognizance of an online sting done by a Netherlands-based children’s rights group which exposed that over 1,000 men world-wide, including 103 from India, offered to pay a digitally-created child to strip. “We are getting this matter enquired into…the joint secretary of a concerned division has been asked to look into the matter and ascertain the facts,” Minister of State for Home, RPN Singh told ET.

Another senior official said the Ministry is also planning to take up with Google and You Tube the issue of online child pornography, on the grounds that such posts should be blocked as child pornography is a serious offence in India under the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act, 2012 and watching child pornography online may have a corelation with increasing crimes against children.

On November 5, BBC had reported that a children rights group operating from Amsterdam had created a fake profile online of a computer-generated and realistic-looking 10-year-old Filipino girl and named her Sweetie.

Terre des Hommes, who runs the child rights group, carried out a 10-week sting posing on video chat rooms as the child and got offers from men asking the child to strip, as per the BBC report.