According to the law, viewing and searching for child pornography is a criminal offense. There is a provision under which the person is found guilty, he/she can get imprisonment for up to 7 years. Not only this but also sharing obscene material, making porn movies and watching child pornography all are considered an offense under section 67(b) of IT Act 2000 and also Section 15 of the POCSO Act. A person can get fined up to Rs. 10 lakhs and 5 years of imprisonment for doing so.
Getting it straight, if anyone goes on Google and searches for ‘child porn’ or ‘child pornography,’ the search engine itself collects it as special information and adds you to the list of people who watch porn as it is against the law.
Google recently gave information to the Punjab Cyber Cell which revealed that around 9,000 people from Punjab went on Google to search about child porn. After receiving this information, the Punjab Police has registered cases on 100 accused out of which most of them are from Jalandhar. Most of the searches about this case were done in Ludhiana, Amritsar, Mohali, Jalandhar and now district-wise data is also being prepared.
A special team has been formed by the State cyber cell under the leadership of the senior IG to carry out an investigation related to child pornography in Punjab. 2 DSPs and officer-level inspectors will also be included in the team.
IPS PK Sinha, head of cyber cell Punjab said that recently, Google has also shared the information with them and an investigation regarding this has been initiated. Talking about the punishment he mentioned that if anyone possesses a child por or uses it for sale purposes then that person will be punished for 3 years. If it happens for the second time, imprisonment of 5 years will be given which can increase up to 7 years as well.
Here are some of the instructions to be kept in mind and followed to avoid child porn content. Firstly, never store any kind of child porn on your device the second one is that even in jokes, never send nude or semi-nude photos of children to anyone. Lastly, if anyone shares with you such kind of links, don’t open them instead share the information with the cyber cell.