Supreme Court asks Centre to remove rape videos from Facebook, YouTube
New Delhi: The Supreme Court on Friday asked the Centre to crackdown on rape videos, particularly involving children being uploaded in social media, like YouTube and Facebook, and remove these contents.
The social justice bench of Justices Madan B. Lokur and Uday Lalit gave this direction while hearing a petition relating to initiation of action for uploading of videos of rape, including a crime perpetrated by a gang of five men on a young woman. The bench in February had taken suo motu cognisance of a letter written to Chief Justice of India H.L. Dattu by Hyderabad-based NGO Prajwala sending a pen drive containing two videos highlighting the crime committed by the gang and seeking appropriate action against the culprits.
D Sunita Krishnan {of Prajwala), who appeared submitted before the bench, said that she had in her possession more than 90 such videos and since there was no mechanism as to where complaints can be made, she could not do anything. Even last week, the videos were still available in social media. She said the offence of rape was being committed with impunity and the offenders had the audacity to video record the crime and put it in the public domain. This had a negative impact on the criminal justice system.
Justice Lalit told additional solicitor-general Maninder Singh that the government must crack down on these offenders and take steps to remove these objectionable videos. Pointing out that the government has the power to do so under the provisions of Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act, the bench issued notice to the ministry of information and broadcasting seeking its response on what action the government could do to prevent such videos from being uploaded and how to remove after they are uploaded in social media.
The bench sought the response of the Union ministries of home and information technology to Prajwala’s suggestions for preventing such crimes in future. Besides the CBI probe, the NGO has sought the setting up of a task force in the Union home ministry to deal with such technology-driven sexual crimes. Public should be encouraged to report the availability of such videos on the Internet to the police through email.
It also sought creation of a national register containing the details of those convicted for sexual crimes, including molestation, stalking and rape. The bench directed the matter for further listing on October 13.
