NEW DELHI: Supreme Court on Friday agreed to examine a plea seeking prosecution of social media and online platforms under the stringent Pocso Act for showing child sexual abuse content and not reporting it to police, reports AmitAnand Choudhary. A bench of Justices J B Pardiwala and K Vinod Chandran issued notice to the Union govt, through the ministry of electronics and information technology (MeitY) and the ministry of law and justice. It asked the petitioner NGO, ‘Just Rights for Children Alliance (JRCA)’, to implead intermediaries in the case to ensure compliance with the court’s 2024 judgment.
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Sections 19 and 20 of Pocso Act make it mandatory for anyone who knows about a child sexual offence to report it to local police and the petitioner said the provision was also applicable to intermediaries and they too were liable to be prosecuted for non-compliance.JRCA, described as India’s largest civil society network with over 250 NGOs working against child sexual exploitation, child trafficking and child marriage, filed the application following a BBC report alleging that Instagram had carried paid advertisements promoting CSAM (Child Sexual Abuse Material).
