New Delhi: With a view to ensuring that explicit videos depicting rape, gang rape and child pornography are not available for circulation in the internet, the Supreme Court has asked the Government to work with companies like Google, Yahoo!, Facebook and WhatsApp to suggest list of key words that will help in blocking such videos. A Bench of justices Madan B. Lokur and Uday Lalit passed this order in the petition relating to Prajwala, an NGO seeking the court’s intervention to block such contents in the internet.
The SC had in 2015 taken suo motu cognisance of a letter written to the then Chief Justice of India by Prajwala, along with a pen drive containing videos highlighting the crime committed by the gang and seeking appropriate action against the culprits, who had the temerity to upload the offensive videos.
The letter was converted into a PIL. On March 22 this year, the court had constituted a technical expert committee to assist and advise this court on the feasibility of ensuring that such objectionable videos are not available for circulation, During the in-camera hearing on Monday, the court accepted the 11 proposals and recommendations based on consensus. The bench in its order said the Centre should work on suggesting key words for blocking the contents.
