The Supreme Court on Thursday agreed to issue orders on preventive steps to be taken by the Centre and other stakeholders against child sexual exploitative and abuse material (CSEAM) online, citing the seriousness of the matter.
The order was passed after the ministry of electronics and information technology (MeitY) submitted a draft Standard Operating Procedure (SOP) to the court. The court posted the matter after a month to allow the Centre come up with further developments on preventing CSEAM online. The Centre was responding to an order passed by the court last month in a petition filed by Just Rights for Children Alliance (JRCA). It further stated that the compliance required includes not just removal of child pornographic content but an immediate report of such content to the concerned police.
The petitioner sought compliance of a 2024 judgment and a uniform SOP to be framed to ensure timely reporting by intermediaries. The judgment passed on September 23, 2024 held that social media intermediaries have a duty to report cases of child abuse and exploitation to the local authorities under Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (Pocso) Act.
“As part of the future preventive action required to be taken with respect to dissemination of CSEAM content, MeitY has drafted an SOP for the intermediaries for prevention, direction, removal and reporting of CSEAM content to a government portal (Sahyog),” the ministry said.
