Recent government data has revealed that lakhs of child porn files were transferred and shared during the last six months with three cities from Kerala among the worst performing.
This comes just a week after the Hyderabad police arrested an American national James Kirk Jones, for downloading and uploading child sexual abuse materials (CSAM) online.
While Amritsar tops the list with 4.3 lakh files shared, New Delhi and Lucknow occupy second and third positions with 2.3 lakh and 1.7 lakh files respectively. These were shared and downloaded in the last six months from July 1, 2016 till January 15, 2017.
Kerala’s Alappuzha and Thiruvananthapuram are fourth and fifth with about 1.6 lakh and 1.07 lakh files respectively.
Pune, Mumbai, Kolkata and Bengaluru are the other cities in the list. However, Kerala is the only state with three cities in the top 10.
The Times of India report states that the present data was taken only from the IP addresses originating within the country, while there are several people who use TOR (The Onion Router) to mask or reroute their IP addresses so that it would look like a foreign IP and they don’t get tracked.
The report adds that the number would have been much higher if such rerouted users were also found.
“For every child porn video, there is a child abuse victim somewhere. Not only are children abused to make the video, but the same material is then used to groom new victims,“ Vidya Reddy from Tulir Centre for the Prevention and Healing of Child Sexual Abuse (CPHCSA) told ToI.
She also added that with technology becoming advanced, there is increasing incidence of such materials being shared online.