Over 160 FIRs lodged, 50 arrested under Op Masoom against child pornography

New Delhi, Dec 3 (IANS) Delhi Police have registered over 160 cases in different police stations and arrested more than 50 people during its special drive against the child pornography under Operation Masoom, officials said Friday.

The operation Masoom (Mitigation of Adolescent Sexually Offensive Online Material) was launched by Intelligence Fusion and Strategic Operations (IFSO) unit of the Delhi Police and all the districts played an instrumental role in curbing the menace of child pornography.

"This exercise is a classic example of interdepartmental and inter agency co-ordination," the official said.

The details of the violations pertaining to child pornographic material is received at IFSO through National Crime Record Bureau (NCRB), which has MOU with National Center for Missing & Exploited Children (NCMEC).

According to the official, NCMEC was established in 1984 by the United Nations Congress. The organisation has tied up with social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram and others. They scroll and crawl the contents of the social media platforms. Whenever, they come across any content found violating the privacy/obscene material regarding children, the same is red flagged. They procure the IP address details of the user who had uploaded the obscene content.

A Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) was signed between NCRB (National Crime Record Bureau) and the National Centre for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC). Under this MoU, NCMEC is providing CyberTipline complaints about sexually offensive content against children to NCRB which is being shared or uploaded on various social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, etc, he said.

For this, NCMEC works in close coordination with these social media platforms as well as the public at large. These complaints, along with details of the person sharing or uploading such sexually offensive contents is forwarded by NCMEC to NCRB which, then, shares the same with state nodal agencies.

Cyber Crime Unit (IFSO), Special Cell, is the nodal agency in Delhi for the same. At IFSO Unit, the details received from NCRB are analysed for the purpose of identification of any organised nexus. The IFSO unit had analysed all the inputs and identified the suspects, the official added.

Thereafter, the information was disseminated with the concerned to take further necessary legal action.

A team was constituted to segregate the Cyber Tiplines provided by NCMEC, on the basis of jurisdiction of districts and police stations. The information was shared with the concerned police stations and districts for the registration of cases and during the drive more than 160 cases were registered.

In the past also, IFSO Unit had initiated a drive against the child pornography and operation MASOOM (Mitigation of Adolescent Sexually Offensive Online Material) was initiated, in which inputs were taken from NCMEC-NCRB and many persons were arrested, the official said.