MALAPPURAM, APR 30,
Child pornography on the social media is increasingly targeting child film artistes, said the police.
Acting on complaints filed by two child artistes at the Kottayam and Manjeri stations, the police have found a wide network of paedophiles engaged in spreading child porn on the social media, particularly Facebook. The police have invoked sections of the Prevention of Children from Sexual Offences (POCSO) Act, Information Technology Act, and the Indian Penal Code against the accused.
4,000 followers
One of the FB accounts that focussed on sharing child porn had over 4,000 followers, mostly using fake IDs, sources said.
Apart from photographs of child artistes, animated GIF images and video clips were found on the FB accounts.
The FB account also had normal pictures of child artistes with X-rated comments about them.
The Facebook account with 4,000-odd followers is believed to have been opened after the police busted a racket involved in child pornography through Instagram a few months ago.
“All of them involved in this closed group are Malayalis. They are using either Malayalam script or English transliteration,” said Childline district coordinator Anvar Karakkadan. Legal experts said accessing child pornography itself is a crime, let alone being directly involved in it by creating and promoting child porn.
Imprisonment
They said the punishment for accessing child pornography can be imprisonment from one to 10 years.
The police said they had zeroed in on the people involved in the crime.
Most of them were youngsters.
