Telangana Police target websites, FB pages selling porn

The Telangana government is mulling over blocking 1500 porn portals and 5000 Facebook pages. IT minister K Taraka Rama Rao also says that the Telangana government wants to hit at adult content which is the root cause of hike in rapes and other gender atrocities across the state.

Citing provisions in the IT Act, the state CID has sent a list of 1,500 porn websites to the state government to be forwarded to the Centre for blocking them. The CID is also writing to Facebook seeking to block 5,000 pages as part of its efforts to crack down on people and organisations making money through online publication of obscene content, black mail and extortion.The committee to review women safety in Telangana, constituted by chief minister K Chandrashekhar Rao, suggested that viewing porn is a major contributor to crime against women and recommended blocking of obscene content that is easily available online.

"The list of websites containing obscene content is being sent to the Centre requesting it to get the websites blocked through the Telecom department directions to Internet service providers," home minister Nayani Narasimha Reddy said. Earlier, the CID had used special tools to identify pages carrying obscene content on Facebook and has written to Facebook asking for deletion of 150 pages. Now, the CID has identified another 5,000 pages or profiles carrying obscene content and the social networking site will be asked to remove them too.

"Young adolescents are most vulnerable to online porn causing a psychological conflict between social values and desire, which leads the young generation into sex, drugs and other addictions says a police expert.The Telangana government had got the DoT to issue directions to all ISPs to block the porn website www.tspolice.com which embarrassed state police, but still private ISPs like Bharati Airtel Ltd and Tata Communications are yet to execute them, say police sources.