NEW DELHI: The Union Ministry of Women and Child Development has asked the Ministry of Home affairs to create an online central reporting mechanism for lodging and escalating complaints of cybercrime against women and kids.
The ministry is also looking to tie up with agencies in the UK, USA and Canada to build an international alliance to ensure full protection to women and children from the borderless nature of cyber crimes.
“Cyber crimes are a big menace that hit the lives of women and kids and we need to create mechanisms to tackle this issue,” said WCD minister Maneka Gandhi.
The development comes days after the ministry proposed to make indecent representation of women on digital messaging platforms such as WhatsApp, Skype, Snapchat and others as “illegal”.
The ministry has suggested amendments to widen the scope of the Indecent Representation of Women (Prohibition) Act, 1986 based on the observations made by a parliamentary standing committee and recommendations from the National Commission for Women.
The draft bill also proposes penalty similar to that provided under the Information Technology Act, 2000 and creation of a centralised authority under the aegis of the National Commission of Women.
In a consultation meeting held on Wednesday to tackle the issue of cyber crime, Gandhi’s ministry has also suggested a mechanism for real time removal and blocking of offensive material online.
“It requires changes at different levels including making changes in the existing laws and we will do that,” said the minister after the meeting.
She mentioned UK model for tackling such crimes which involves setting up a network of hotlines where one focal point acts as a clearing house of complaints and the partner hotlines then move in to eliminate the content.
For this the ministry is exploring the possibility of collaborating with INHOPE, Internet Watch Foundation, UK, National Centre for Missing and Exploited Children, USA and Canadian Centre for Child Protection, Canada.
Gandhi added that the Inter-poll list which is available with CBI and UKs hotline, Internet Watch Foundation's dynamic list of URLs for Child Pornography can also be utilised in India.