Can rape videos be blocked: Supreme Court

The Supreme Court on Friday asked the ministry of information technology to find out whether a mechanism can be created to block objectionable sexual videos, particularly involving children from being uploaded in social media like Facebook and WhatsApp and once uploaded they can be removed or blocked.

The social justice bench of Justices Madan B. Lokur and Uday Lalit gave this direction while hearing a petition relating to initiation of action for uploading of gangrape videos, including a crime perpetrated by a gang of four men on a young woman.

The bench in February had taken suo motu cognisance of a letter written to former Chief Justice of India H.L. Dattu by Hyderabad-based NGO Prajwala sending a pen drive containing two videos highlighting the crime committed by the gang and seeking appropriate action against the culprits.

Dr Sunita Krishnan (of Prajwala), who appeared submitted before the bench, said last month there was a crackdown on a website in which over 3,500 children who were victims of child trafficking had shared their experiences.

It was later found that many children were indulging in prostitution and Kerala registered a case against four persons. In another incident in Maharashtra, four classmates had video recorded the rape of a student and posted it in WhatsApp and Facebook.

She said many such videos were still circulating on social media. She said the offence of rape was being committed with impunity and the offenders had the audacity to video-record the crime and put it in the public domain. This had a negative impact on the criminal justice system and there is no mechanism to block such contents from being uploaded.