In a bid to crack down heavily on child pornography, the Ministry of Women and Child Development has laid down a clear definition of what constitutes the offence and has included sexually explicit digital content involving children under its purview as per an amendment to the existing POCSO Act which will be tabled before the Lok Sabha soon.
The new version of the amendment, which was cleared by the Cabinet Wednesday, defines pornography as “any visual depiction of sexually explicit conduct involving a child which includes photograph, video, digital or computer generated image indistinguishable from an actual child and an image created, adapted or modified but appear to depict a child”.
It states that anyone who “stores or possesses pornographic material involving a child but fails to delete, destroy or report it to the distinguished authority” would have to pay Rs 5,000 for first offence, Rs 10,000 for repeated offenders, with no upper limit on the fine amount. The fines earlier were in the range of Rs 1,000 to Rs 3,000.
Ministry sources said that as per changes proposed by WCD minister Smriti Irani, the new law will even include instances where adults pretend to be children in pornographic content. A statement by the ministry spokesperson read, “It is the WCD Minister’s initiative that from now there will be zero tolerance for child pornography and for that reason, the definition of child pornography was essential as definition leads to setting the context of the crime.”