TIRUNELVELI: Minister for Women and Child Development Smriti Irani said that 377 websites took down pornography content after an alert and 50 FIRs were filed in this connection. She was replying to MP Vijila Sathyanath during the Zero Hour in the Rajya Sabha on Thursday.
“During the last session, the house passed special penal provisions against online child pornography. My request to each member of the Parliament and each district officials is to report online pornographic content so that it could be taken down immediately. We are trying to make the district administration the fulcrum of this coordinated effort,” she said.
Vijila demanded to ensure child safety by prohibiting such content in the internet, citing several incidents of sexual harassment in the State. “The National Commission for Protection of Child Rights has received 5,951 complaints on child abuse in the last three years. The WHO estimates, globally, up to one billion children between 2 and 17 years of age have experienced physical assaults,” she said.
Citing that pornographic content makes up for 30 per cent of the total data transferred across the internet, she further said, “It is unsafe for children who are using smartphones to play online games. Children as young as 8 to 9 years old are coming across sexually-explicit content on the internet and in other media. In one study which involved 932 sex addicts, 90 per cent of men and 77 per cent of women reported that pornography as the cause for their addiction,” she added.