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CRIME: CYBERPORN
Smut Aleck
As a 16-year-old becomes the first Indian accused
of Internet porn crimes, his case ignites a debate on punishment for juvenile
offenders
By Sayantan Chakravarty
He's the teenager
next door. He hums the latest from MTV, does fairly well at school, an
average student, a quiet kid who doesn't make friends easily. His favourite
companion, naturally, is his computer and the desktop is his playground.
Today, though, he has become the first Indian to be accused of cyber-porn
offences.
He could be your son.
A Class XII student of the Air Force Bal Bharti
School, Delhi, who set up a pornographic website featuring his classmates,
he finds himself smack in the middle of a nightmare. Expelled from school
and at the centre of a high-profile case that has attracted the Delhi
Police and the media's closest attention. The case has thrown up new and
difficult questions on the balance between crime and punishment for juvenile
offenders, the dangers facing minors in the unsupervised world of the
Internet and the extent of parental and institutional responsibility in
a crime like this.
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| NET NOOSE: The dangers of unsupervised surfing
have come home to roost |
The 16-year-old schoolboy, let's call him D,
tormented by his schoolmates for "ugly" birthmarks on his face,
was driven to the Net, and built his own website www.amazing-gents.8m.net.
It was far from an innocent outpouring of his emotions. The site contained
lurid and explicit references about his classmates, mostly those girls
who would tease him about his birthmarks. D then boasted about his version
of revenge to other boys in his class. With the web address out in public
and more and more boys accessing the site to read the material on their
schoolmates and even some "sexy teachers", danger was a step
away. On April 26, D's luck ran out and his world fell apart.
Officials from Delhi's Crime Branch, acting
on a complaint by a schoolgirl's father, traced the website, shut it down,
and before his Indian Air Force officer father could blink, hauled D to
court. Here the treatment of the story gets heavy-handed. Produced before
a juvenile court in the capital, D was taken away to an overcrowded boys'
home where he stayed for four days. D's name and face must remain anonymous
as required under the Juvenile Justice Act.
It is every parent's worst fear come true. The
Net has now become easily accessible to computer-literate children in
cities and cyber porn is hardly a new offence. But in India, the arrest
of
a minor caught running a pornographic site was unheard of. Now, any middle-class
home with the combination of a computer and an angry teenager can become
the location for a serious crime, one punishable by a jail term between
one and five years and/or a fine between Rs 1,000 and Rs 1 lakh.
Finding the source of a cyber porn site is now
fairly simple. In this case, the complaint was made on April 11 and two
weeks later, the police got to the creator of the offensive site. Assistant
Commissioner of Police Rajan Bhagat of the Crime Branch used VSNL's gateways
to track down the IP address and header, which details the city or country
of a website creator. VSNL then traced the site to the boy's home computer
and shut it down. All the information was first stored for presenting
to the court.
D has been charged under three laws. The ones
under the Indian Penal Code (Sections 292 and 509) pertain to the display
and writing of "lascivious material that appeals to prurient minds".
Apart from Sections 4 ND 6 of the Indecent Representation of Women Act,
D has also been charged Under Section 67 of the Information Technology
Act, which specifically pertains to cyber crimes and came into being as
late as 2000.
The boy's life is now in ruin. He cannot go
back to school and will only be able to sit privately for his exams. His
principal, M. Titus, refuses to talk to India Today. In a city where bigger
crimes are winked at, questions are being asked about the severity with
which the Delhi Police went about their task.
The juvenile court has stepped in, stating that
the law required rehabilitation rather than conviction for the minor.
D was released from the boys' home and is now back with his family. School
principals, counsellors and lawyers believe the incident is an alarm which
must wake up parents, teachers, children, lawmakers and law enforcers
alike.
Should a teenager committing a crime, essentially
repugnant in nature, be arrested and tried? Or-as suggested by the Delhi
court-counselled and put back on the track to reform? Says Pawan Duggal,
Supreme Court advocate and president, Cyberlaws.net: "The case smacks
of a lack of sensitivity. By rusticating him, the child has been punished
even before the trial has begun." Arun Kapur, principal of Vasant
Valley School, says, "This kind of behaviour has been taking place
for a long time on buildings and bathroom walls. Only the space is different
this time. We should treat it like graffiti." The school has been
debating the consequences of children accessing pornography ever since
the case became public.
One of the solutions offered is that computers be installed in a "public
place" at home where parents can keep an eye on the child's Net habits,
making the child uncomfortable with doing anything he or she considers
"forbidden". There is the counselling process under which parents
are asked to talk to children, educating them about the power of the Net
and the unwritten rules and responsibilities its users must know.
Shyama Chona, principal of the Delhi Public
School, R.K. Puram, says penal action is unwanted. "It hurts to hear
that a child has set up a porn website, but I don't blame the child,"
she says. "To prevent such situations, parents should talk to the
children frankly about sex and listen to their questions and fears. Children
should be taught not to see sex as a sole source of forbidden pleasure."
Ameeta Parsuram, psychology teacher at Jesus and Mary College and a counsellor
for several schools, adds, "Instead of punishment, we need to look
at the belief systems that operate around a child."
The police may have been doing their job but
the courts and the educationists believe that reform rather than retribution
is called for in this case. In the long run, though, this returns to being
essentially an issue of a child's upbringing and the need to constantly
bridge generations during the process. The Internet has only made this
a more urgent concern. The youngster next door cannot be denied a computer.
But what he does with it can certainly be enforced.
—With Supriya Bezbaruah
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