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New Delhi: The Supreme Court has given a clear decision that watching, downloading or sharing child pornography is a crime. Along with this, the Supreme Court also canceled the decision of the Madras High Court that merely watching child pornography is not a crime. Apart from this, the Supreme Court has asked the central government to use the term child sexual exploitation and abuse material instead of child pornography. The Supreme Court clarified that merely storing or watching child pornography is a crime under the POCSO and IT Act.
The bench of Chief Justice D.Y. Chandrachud, Justice JB Pardiwala and Manoj Mishra of the Supreme Court gave this verdict. It also said that the Madras High Court has made a mistake in this case. Therefore, the order of the High Court is also canceled and the case is sent to the Sessions Court. The Madras High Court said in its decision that merely downloading or watching child pornography material is not a crime under POCSO and IT Act.
On January 11 this year, the Madras High Court quashed criminal proceedings against a 28-year-old man from Tamil Nadu accused of downloading child pornography. And offences were registered against him under POCSO and IT Act. The Madras High Court said in its judgment that just watching or downloading child pornography is not a crime, watching pornography by children is a serious matter. Society should educate them instead of punishing them.
After this decision of the Madras High Court, two organizations related to children later appealed to the Supreme Court in this case, which was heard on Monday. The Supreme Court said that the High Court had made a mistake in its decision. Rejecting the decision of the High Court, the Supreme Court said in its decision that watching child pornography, deleting or storing it from your device or sharing or distributing it on the Internet or in any other way is also considered a crime under the POCSO Act. . We have said earlier that storing or sharing child pornography for financial or any other benefit is a crime. We would also like to advise the government to use the term Child Sexual Exploitation and Abuse Material (CSEAM) instead of the term child pornography and for this the Parliament should also consider amending the POCSO Act. By doing this, these types of crimes will be reflected more accurately.
