The Delhi Commission for Women (DCW) Chairperson Swati Maliwal has summoned Twitter India Policy Head and Delhi Police over tweets depicting child pornography and rape videos of women and children over the social media platform Twitter.

Taking suo moto cognizance of tweets depicting videos and photographs of sexual acts involving children, the commission stated that most of the tweets portrayed children completely naked and many of them also depicted brutal rape and other non-consensual sexual activities with children and women.

“Shockingly, some of these videos even depicted rape with children and women while they were asleep! Some of the twitter accounts engaging in these criminal acts appear to be running a racket wherein they seek money for providing pornographic and rape videos of children from other users of the social media platform,” stated DCW Chairperson Swati Maliwal.

The commission has shared a list of such tweets with the Delhi Police and Twitter.

Besides, the commission has raised an apprehension that hundreds of such objectionable videos openly displaying child pornography and rape are present on Twitter.

In the summons issued to Twitter, the commission has stated that it is “deeply distressed” that such illegal acts involving sexual abuse of children and young women are being publicized through the social media platform.

The commission has summoned Twitter official in order to ascertain the steps being taken by them to prevent such filthy and outrightly criminal acts being propagated through their medium as well as the systems in place in the platform to immediately report the same to law enforcement agencies.

Specifically, the commission has asked them to provide reasons why the tweets were neither deleted nor reported by Twitter.

In addition, the commission has also sought data regarding the number of such tweets presently available on Twitter.

Further, it has sought the number of tweets depicting child pornography and rape identified, deleted, and reported by Twitter in the past 4 years.

Maliwal stated, “I am shocked with the kind of rape and child pornographic videos available freely on Twitter. The videos depict rape of children and women even while they are asleep!”

She added, “The nauseating material needs to be immediately removed from Twitter and FIR should be registered by Delhi Police in the matter. Systems must be developed so that all such videos are immediately deleted and the perpetrators reported to the law enforcement agencies. Twitter must be held accountable for this filthy and objectionable content being available and even sold on its platform!”