Government Strengthens Online Safety for Children with Stricter Action Against Child Sexual Abuse Material on Social Media
The policies of the Government are aimed at ensuring an open, safe, trusted, and accountable internet for its users, including women and children. The Information Technology Act, and the Information Technology (Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code) Rules, 2021, together, have put in place a stringent framework to deal with unlawful and harmful content in the digital space.
Government of India has taken serious note of the reports alleging the dissemination of advertisements linked to child sexual abuse material CSAM) on social media platforms and sought a detailed report from the concerned intermediary.National Commission for Protection of Child Rights (“NCPCR”) has also issued notice to concerned social media platforms.
The IT Act provides punishment for various cyber offences such as identity theft (section 66C), impersonation (section 66D), privacy violations (section 66E), publishing or transmitting obscene or sexually explicit content (sections 67, 67A, 67B). It also empowers Police to investigate offences (Section 78 and 80).
The IT Rules cast specific obligations on intermediaries to observe due diligence while discharging their duties and shall inform the users of computer resources not to host, display, upload, modify, publish, transmit, update or share any information that is harmful to children, obscene, pornographic, invasive of another’s privacy, insulting or harassing on the basis of gender or violates any law for the time being in force.
The intermediary, within two hours from the receipt of a complaint made by an individual or any person on behalf, in relation to any content which involves full / partial nudity, exposing the private area and artificially morphed images of an individual should take all reasonable and practicable measures to remove or disable access to such content which is hosted, stored, published or transmitted by it.
This information was submitted by Union Minister of State for Electronics and Information Technology, Jitin Prasada in Lok Sabha (UPDATED ON 22ND JULY 2026)