The Uttarakhand High Court on Thursday ordered the Centre to block over 850 adult websites. The court’s direction came in the wake of the alleged gangrape of a Class 10 student of a Dehradun boarding school in August. The accused, all believed to be 17 years old, allegedly committed the crime after watching porn on their mobile phones. Six people, including school administration officials and a student, were sent to judicial custody last week.
“There shall be a direction to all the Internet Service Licence Holders to punctually obey the [central government] notification dated July 31, 2015, and to block the publication or transmission of obscene material in any electronic form, transmitting of material containing sexually explicit act or conduct and also publishing or transmitting of material depicting children in sexually explicit act or conduct forthwith,” a bench of Acting Chief Justice Rajiv Sharma and Justice Manoj Kumar Tiwari said according to The Indian Express.
On July 31, 2015, the Department of Information Technology had asked the Telecommunications to deactivate 857 URLs related to adult websites.
“The sites are readily available to the children to view obscene and indecent acts, including pornography,” the court, taking suo motu cognisance of the rape case, observed on Thursday, according to News18. “The psyche of the children of impressionable age is also affected, which, at times, results in commission of crimes.”
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