Digital child sexual exploitation

The recent conviction and award of the death sentence to a couple by a special POCSO court in Banda, Uttar Pradesh, India, has shaken the conscience of the country. For a decade, a junior engineer and his wife lured children, gave them chocolates, video games and other gifts, and then raped them, filmed the acts, and allegedly produced and transmitted more than two lakh pornographic videos. The brutality began in a rented room in a small town of Uttar Pradesh, but the multinational cybercrime racket, as revealed by the investigating agencies, had buyers of the videos of the rapes of children in dozens of countries. The couple targeted children, including boys who were almost three years old, in multiple districts such as Banda and Chitrakoot. These children were tempted with toys, snacks and chocolates, and later abused and video-recorded.

In the present case, which has been charged under the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act, 2012, and the Information Technology Act, 2000, it cannot be said that it is merely an issue of perversion in an individual capacity. It can rather be said that the present case is yet another poignant reminder that the sexual abuse of children has reached a critical juncture, wherein the dark web of encrypted chats and anonymous identities plays a major role.

Some child sexual abuse material (CSAM) is being shared through open internet platforms until it is detected and deleted. However, some of it is being shared through encrypted messaging platforms and dark web networks. The dark web is a part of the internet that can be accessed through special software that allows users to remain anonymous. This allows users to remain hidden and creates a black market for such material.

The Banda case, as reported, involved the digital dissemination of such material outside India. This is a common occurrence in dark web environments, where the servers, users and financial platforms are distributed across the globe.

The dark web does not create the abuse; the abuse starts in homes, schools and neighbourhoods. However, the dark web facilitates the abuse by turning acts of cruelty into a global black market.

It is important to clarify a legal point that is often misunderstood. While there may be debate about the issue, watching adult pornographic material in private is not an offence under Indian law. However, browsing or watching any material that contains minors in sexual acts is a serious criminal offence. Sections 13 and 14 of the POCSO Act, 2012, criminalise the use of children in pornographic material, and Section 67B of the IT Act criminalises the publication, transmission, browsing, downloading and possession of sexually explicit material involving children in electronic form.

The Supreme Court’s landmark judgment in Just Rights for Children Alliance v S Harish (2024) resolved a contentious debate on whether viewing or possessing child sexual abuse material amounts to an offence. The Court ruled that viewing or possessing such material, without deleting it or reporting it, qualifies as an offence, noting that “each click perpetuates a chain of exploitation that starts with the abuse of a real child.”

The Court also recommended replacing the term “child pornography” with “Child Sexual Exploitative and Abuse Material (CSEAM)”, emphasising that the language must reflect the reality of abuse.

The urgency is also justified by statistical data. The National Cyber Crime Reporting Portal, which operates in association with the Cyber Crime Prevention Against Women and Children Scheme of the Ministry of Home Affairs, has recorded around 1.94 lakh cases of child pornography and sexual abuse-related complaints till April 2024. However, it is believed that this is just the tip of the iceberg, as the actual number could be much higher. These could include online grooming, sexual abuse, blackmail through morphed images, and sexual abuse threats on social media and dark web platforms. These reports can be filed anonymously with the NCRP. This is an important point because there is a huge amount of shame related to sexual offences. The increasing reports of such offences not only indicate the alarming rate at which such cybercrimes are taking place but also indicate that awareness is increasing. However, the law and enforcement agencies are facing many challenges.

The threat scenario is still evolving with the emergence of AI technology. AI technology has become capable of producing realistic synthetic images and videos depicting children in sexually explicit content. Such images are called AI-generated CSAM. The threat associated with AI-generated images is that they lead to the normalisation of child exploitation, encourage deviant demand for CSAM, and enable blackmail by inserting children’s images into a video or image. Law enforcement agencies all over the world are struggling to understand how AI technology can be regulated in terms of child exploitation content. The provisions of the POCSO Act and the IT Act are applicable in India in the event of children being used in AI-generated images or being exploited in any manner.

But this is not just a court case; this is a case that indicts society. These were not faceless individuals lurking on the Internet. These were individuals in society, mingling with families and children. Child abuse is the grooming of the child before the abuse is reflected on the Internet. Caregivers, parents, and teachers should be aware enough to monitor any unusual behavior changes in the child. There should be integration of online safety in the school curriculum. There should be improvements in the detection capabilities by Internet service providers, with their cooperation in facilitating the quick removal of offending content by the authorities. There should be the use of reporting tools, such as the NCRP, when one suspects online offending. But most importantly, society should not take the issue of “online content” abuse with levity. There is no such thing as harmless child pornography. Each image is a child whose dignity, safety, and future have been violated.

Technology is not evil in and of itself, but it has been a tool that has brought people together, opened doors for new opportunities in education, and helped drive the economy forward. It has also been a tool that, without careful observation, has been the tool that has allowed humanity’s worst attributes to flourish. The dark net, encryption, and technology are not untouchables, but they take cooperation, new laws, and ethical behavior on all sides to achieve that cooperation. India’s laws, buttressed by interpretation in Just Rights for Children Alliance, clearly warn that sexual exploitation of children, whatever form that exploitation may take with technology’s facilitation, is not acceptable.

 The laws are part of the solution, but without dealing with the trauma that has been caused, there is not a complete solution. As the Banda case demonstrates, the exploitation could have started in a single room, but the scope of the child sexual exploitation could have been across the globe. The solution to the problem of digital child sexual exploitation is not just about punishing the people who commit the crime, but about dismantling the technology, the economy, and the societies that facilitate the crime in the first place. Combatting Child sexual exploitation in the digital world is not optional; it is a constitutional, moral, and societal imperative.

Arvind P Bhanu, Professor of Law and Research, and Kishan Pratap, Research Scholar, Amity University Noida ; views are personal