'India reported over 24L online child abuse cases in 2017-20'
New Delhi: India reported over 24 lakh instances of online child sexual abuse during three year period between 2017-20 with 80 per cent of the victims being girls below the age of 14 years, according to Interpol data. The figures had prompted the CBI to start a massive operation against the alleged peddlers of online child sexual abuse material (CSAM) in India with several websites under the scanner for their liability in hosting such material, officials said.
The Interpol data indicates that content and consumers of CSAM are growing at a sharp rate with one finding reporting that 1.16 lakh queries on child pornography were made on a single internet search engine.
The central probe agency plans to take up the matter with social media websites and hosting platforms under the relevant legal provisions to examine their role and liability, sources said. "The data from Interpol is worrisome. It shows 2.4 million instances of online child sexual abuse with 80 per cent victims being young girls," a senior official said.
The CBI operation is targeted at 50 online social media groups having 5,000 participants from across the globe who share and peddle CSAM.
The groups have 36 members from Pakistan, Canada (35), USA (35), Bangladesh (31), Sri Lanka (30), Nigeria (28), Azerbaijan (27), Yemen (24) and Malaysia (22), the sources said.The central agency will now coordinate with foreign law enforcement agencies of these countries to bring the accused to the book and locate the origin of CSAM, they said.
"The CBI is coordinating with sister agencies through formal and informal channels," an official said.
The analysis of some of the electronic devices recovered during the searches has shown that a lot of accused booked by the agency were minting regular money by disseminating CSAM by sharing links, videos, pictures, texts, posts and hosting of these groups and platforms and third party storage and hosting platforms, they said. "These people were earning regular income in their bank accounts linked to such online platforms. Money trail is being followed to work out the backward and forward linkages of the offenders," the official said.
