Over 1,540 cases of online child sexual abuse were registered in two years to 2015 as per data from National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB), Parliament was informed on Friday.
“National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) has started collecting data on publishing or transmitting of material depicting children in sexually explicit act in electronic form since 2014. As per information provided by NCRB, a total of 749 and 792 cases were registered for online child sexual abuse during 2014 and 2015, respectively,” Minister for Electronics and IT Ravi Shankar Prasad said in a written reply to the Rajya Sabha.
The Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (POCSO) Act, 2012, mandates that reporting of child sexual abuse in any form should be reported to special juvenile police unit or the local police, he added. In addition, the National Commission for Protection of Child Rights (NCPCR) has launched a portal ‘e-Box’ in August 2016 to register online complaints of child sexual abuse, the Minister said.
“…the e-Box portal of NCPCR has received 103 complaints from August 26, 2016 to 4 November, 2016,” he added. Besides, the Department of Telecommunications has directed Internet service providers to block Interpol’s “Worst-of-list” (containing websites addresses of extreme child sexual
imagery) provided by Central Bureau of Investigation on 29 September, 2016, Prasad said.