Why India needs a robust content deletion procedure to repress revenge pornography

Indian laws for the prevention and deletion of revenge pornography fall short of the mark, despite the implementation of the new Information Technology Rules, 2021 and the amendment thereof. The author makes a case for the need to reform the procedure by analysing the existing framework and encouraging proactive content deletion rather than bolting the stable after the horse has fled. 

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IN 2020, a 16-year-old girl in Gujarat committed suicide after her intimate video was leaked online. In another incident two years later, the police arrested a man in Tamil Nadu for posting nude images of a girl online. 

Though varying in time and space, three aspects connect these stories. First, the images were posted or leaked by the partners of these women; second, the images were taken with the consent of the women when they were in a relationship with these men; and third, they were leaked with the motive of seeking revenge.

Such incidents often constitute the offence of revenge pornography, which is a sub-type of non-consensual intimate image sharing (NCII). It is a term used to describe, "an intimate image or video that is initially shared within the context of a private relationship but is later publicly disclosed, usually on the internet, without the consent of the individual featured in the explicit graphic."