ALAPPUZHA: The sharing of child sexual abuse material (CSAM) on the internet goes on unhindered among peer groups though the Ministry of Women and Child Development has set up a national alliance against child abuse comprising members from the ministry of home, law, HR, IT, civil society organisations and major web portals. During the last two years, many Tamil and Malayalam Facebook pages with the objectionable content have been reported, but none have been shut down, according to activists. Sally Kannan, rights activist, points out that at least 37 per cent of internet is covered with pornographic materials and a major portion of it revolves round children.
“I recently came across a Facebook page in which people keep sharing the pictures of minor girls and discussing various ways to have sex with them. The page has around 600 'like-minded' members following it and spewing venom. I sent it to the hi-tech cell authorities, but there was no action. In 2015, I found a Tamil page on Facebook called 'Chinna Ponnu Veriyargal' and I sent the details to the Tamil Nadu cyber cell which arrested the person behind it. There are a lot of such pages online," she says. A recently unearthed Facebook page offers different pictures of children. The online child porn is directly linked to offline child abuse.
The culprits go scot-free as the police can track down only those IP addresses that originate in the country. However, many such pages are run with fake IP addresses making it appear that they are based in another country, say experts. "Technology has made the availability of CSAM easy. Despite the large volume of child porn being shared through private social media groups, reporting remains abysmally low leading to serious repercussions," according to Dhanya Menon, cybercrime investigator and managing trustee of Thrissur-based TVM Avanzo Charitable Trust. Kerala towns like Alappuzha and Thrissur were among the top ten cities where CSAM was shared on multiple occasions in the past six months. Mr S. Sreekanth, Circle Inspector, Hi- Tech Crime Inquiry Cell, says it is difficult to root out pornographic content from the cyber space as such pages are being operated from outside the country.
