Madras HC awaits SOP non-consensual images

Hindustan Times

24-07-2025

The Madras high court is awaiting a standard operating procedure (SOP) from the Centre for victims to follow if videos and photos get uploaded online without their consent, to be taken down. Justice Anand Venkatesh said that he would pass a judicial order, after the SOP is submitted. The court was hearing the plea filed by a woman advocate stating that her former partner had released videos and photos of their intimate moments, filmed without her consent, on social media and pornographic sites (ANI)
The court was hearing the plea filed by a woman advocate stating that her former partner had released videos and photos of their intimate moments, filmed without her consent, on social media and pornographic sites.
The HC on Tuesday issued a direction to the Union minister of electronics and information technology to ensure that six video links where the videos and photos continue to resurface, is effectively blocked and 'it shall also be ensured that it does not resurface again…This Court wants to await for the Standard Operating Procedure to be evolved by the concerned department and once the same is filed before this Court, the same can be acted upon and a judicial order can be passed'.
According to the court, the case 'is a pathetic story of a young girl who was misled' during her college days by a person who in the guise of loving her, made false promises to marry her but 'subjected her to repeated sexual exploitation which was filmed without her knowledge and was transmitted across the internet.'
The petitioner, who now practices in the high court, is reportedly struggling to remove this content. She came to know about her videos and photos online through a friend, and filed a police complaint in April that it was shared across 70 websites and downloaded on Telegram, Google drive and more. She was questioned by peers and clients over it and felt publicly shamed.
Under the Information Technology Act, 2000 and Rules, the Union minister of Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology is the only authority to issue directions for blocking and removal of such material, the court said, adding that since her petition to them was not acted upon, she moved the high court.
She has sought take down notices to be issued to all intermediaries, websites, pornographic platforms, telecommunication service providers to detect, remove, and block all content of her Non-Consensual Intimate Imagery (NCII) by using technological solutions that detect exploitative images of children such as Hash Matching Technology, Artificial Intelligence-based content recognition tools including Photo DNA, Google content safety Hash checkers. These photos and videos are being downloaded, uploaded,shared, transmitted and distributed all over the internet, she said.
In the hearing on July 15, the court had directed the Union ministry to ensure that the videos and photos do not resurface and the technology that has been discussed in the order passed by high courts in Delhi and Karnataka in related cases should be adopted.
If the ministry is able to completely block the intimate images and videos and also prevent the same from resurfacing, it will be a test case which can be applied in future to handle the situation more effectively, the court had said in the last hearing.
When the case was heard on Monday, the petitioner's senior counsel submitted to the court the videos and images continue to exist in at least six video links.
Senior panel counsel A Kumaraguru, appearing for the Electronics and Information Technology Ministry, informed the court that the Home Ministry and Women and Child Welfare Department are in the process of finalising an SOP as was suggested by the judge in the previous hearing and required more time. He added that the home ministry has released a press note calling for every city to appoint a Chief Information Security Officer (CISO) to safeguard data and systems against cyber threats.
The ministry has also urged states and city administrations to conduct regular security audits and to ensure protection from cyber threats.
The court also decided to seriously consider Tamil Nadu's public prosecutor Hasan Mohamed Jinnah's suggestion that the ban on publishing any material that could reveal the identity of a victim in Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (Pocso) cases should be extended to all sexual crimes against women.
The public prosecutor also confirmed that the name of the petitioner has been removed from the FIR and all other documents as directed by the court to protect her identity. Magistrates must insist for FIR to be produced in a sealed cover in such cases, he added. 'The submissions made by the learned State Public Prosecutor require serious consideration,' the court said.
During the previous hearing, the court came down heavily on the Tamil Nadu police since the petitioner's name was mentioned in the FIR and 'shockingly the victim girl informed that the video was witnessed by the male police officers and they were asking for the identity of the person to the victim girl.' The court posted the case to August 5.