Delhi Police blocks 23 Twitter accounts for showing child pornographic content

New Delhi: The Intelligence Fusion and Strategic Operations (IFSO) unit of the Delhi Police on Tuesday said it has blocked 23 accounts on Twitter for showing child pornographic content.

Police said they received information regarding the links showing child pornography on September 20.

"After receiving the information, we immediately registered an FIR on September 20 and seized the evidences. We wrote to Twitter to block the accounts and sought details of the accounts from the microblogging site," a senior police officer said.

In this process, Twitter takes its own time in giving those details, the officer added.

Police said the investigation is underway.

"We immediately formed four teams -- two technical and two working on ground. The investigation is underway and we are also waiting for the reply from Twitter regarding the accounts," Deputy Commissioner of Police (IFSO) Prashant Gautam said.

"In last operation which was conducted along with the district police across the national capital in December 2021 and January 2022, the IFSO has registered a total of 189 cases and arrested 132 people," he added.

The IFSO is planning to conduct another operation in a few days, officials said.

On September 20, the Delhi Commission for Women (DCW) issued summons to the Delhi Police and Twitter regarding the presence of several tweets on the microblogging site that displayed child pornographic content.

These tweets openly depicted videos and photographs of sexual acts involving children.

In its summons, the commission had asked Twitter to submit the details of steps being taken by them to prevent such filthy and outrightly criminal acts from being propagated through their medium as well as the systems in place in the company to immediately report the same to law enforcement agencies.

The commission had also asked the social media giant to provide an explanation as to why the tweets were neither deleted nor reported by them.

Further, it also sought the number of tweets depicting child pornography and rape identified, deleted, and reported by Twitter in the past four years.

The commission tried to ascertain whether artificial intelligence and machine learning tools are being used by the microblogging site to automatically identify and delete tweets depicting abuse against women and children, a DCW statement said.

In response to the summons, Twitter officials informed the commission that all the accounts flagged by the commission have been deactivated.

However, they submitted an incomplete reply and therefore sought time from the commission to submit a detailed reply. Twitter has been given time till September 30 to submit a detailed point-wise reply, the statement added.

Further, senior officers from the Delhi Police informed the commission that an FIR has been registered into the matter. However, they said, due to a lack of response from Twitter in the matter, they have been unable to ensure arrests.

Taking a strong note, the Commission told Twitter India to assist in the investigation and provide all information sought by the Delhi Police into the matter.