New Delhi: Tackling child pornography and online abuse will be the top priority of the government’s highly-sophisticated Indian Cyber Crime Coordination Centre (IC4) — set up to deal with cyber crimes in the country.
A Rs 400-crore cybercrime control hub will be set up to check all cyber crimes, including child pornography and online abuse in the country, sources said. The IC4 will have linkages with CCTNS and NATGRID, the two databases which have all information related to various kinds of crime and criminals.
One of the priorities of the IC4 will be to keep track of international gangs who try to penetrate or hack government’s official communication network.
“Key objectives of the IC4 are, to act as a nodal point in India’s fight against cyber crime and be an early warning system for law enforcement agencies. It will also open up a platform for online cybercrime complaints to co-ordinate with electronic investigations and assist the law enforcement agencies in criminal investigation,” sources said.
The initiative comes after an expert committee, constituted to prepare a roadmap for tackling cyber crimes, submitted its report to the home ministry and pointed out that India lacks centralised online reporting mechanism, adequate infrastructure and skilled cyber professionals.
As per its recommendations, there is a need to drastically reduce crimes against children and women, especially online abuse. Union home minister Rajnath Singh has already directed speedy implementation of the recommendations.
“These kinds of content and websites need to be monitored and blocked. The supporting laws need to be strengthened, parents need to be educated to monitor children’s activities in cyber space and educate children about good cyber behaviour,” the committee has said in its report.
The government has already asked Internet Service Providers to block over 800 sites, which had child porn content.
The Supreme Court too, had pulled up the Centre for not doing much to check child pornography. There has been almost 40 per cent annual increase in cyber crimes during the last two years.
