Child porn demand on a high in Shimla: Study

BQ– The data from ‘Porn hub’ also reveals that traffic from India has increased by 95 per cent between March 24 and 26

Tribune News Service

Shimla, April 14

The state capital figures among the cities with “high demand” for child pornographic material, posing a grave risk to children during lockdown.

Reports say that since lockdown, data monitoring websites are showing an increase in demand for searches like “child porn”, “sexy child” and “teen sex videos”.

“The data from ‘Porn hub’ also reveals that traffic from India has increased by 95 per cent between March 24 and 26. Such websites are playing hide-and-seek with law and the judiciary by changing their website URLs. The government must crack down on child pornography and initiate a global dialogue against child sexual abuse material,” asserted spokesperson for the Indian Child Protection Fund (ICPF) Nivedita Ahuja in a release here today.

The ICPF has released a report titled “Child Sexual Abuse Material in India”, a research of child pornography demand in 100 cities like New Delhi, Chennai, Mumbai, Kolkata, Bhubaneswar and Indore. The demand for child pornography was an average of 5 million per month in the cities during December 2019, which has now spiked.

Metro cities like New Delhi, Kolkata, Chennai and Mumbai, besides many Tier-II and capital cities, which are seeing a sharp increase in Coronavirus cases, have been red-flagged by the December study as hotspots for child pornography. The organisation has implored the authorities to step up online vigil in these cities for potential exploiters.