Perpetuating Perniciousness!

Thin veil that separates eroticism from porn is vanishing fast.

- Maharaaj K. Koul

On 8 October 2015, the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) informed the Supreme Court of India that under the existing set-up, it was extremely difficult to curb circulation of violent porn on the Internet as content providers kept shifting Websites to cater to the huge “domineering male population” in India betraying “insatiable lust and penchant for salacious material.”

In an affidavit, the CBI said that it was a “bitter, ironic truth that paradigmatic advances in the realm of information and communications have provided a new dimension to crimes of rape and gang rape across the country.”

The CBI sounded a serious warning — the pervasive presence of pornography on the Internet coupled with rapid urbanisation is fast disconnecting the youth from social values, making them inclined towards sexual offences and has called for a national agency to deal with sexual assaults depicted on the Web.

On the one hand, the agency linked the rise in sexual assaults on women to the rampant circulation of pornography on Internet and on the other; it said visuals posted on the Web go unpunished as no state police had the jurisdiction, capability or expertise to deal with such Cybercrime.

“The absence or serious deficiency of law enforcement in the vast arena of Cyberspace, leads to impunity amongst the youth, who feel emboldened by the virtual assurance of non-deterrence and the hope that they can get away with it easily,” the agency said.

Ban or no ban, Indian cities account for the highest number of Google searches for porn. The latest Google Trends data show that six of the top 10 cities in the world keying in porn on the search engine are in India. Leading the brigade of porn surfers are Netizens from New Delhi, followed by Pune, Mumbai, Howrah, Unnao and Bangaluru in that order.