The Dark Web Of Child Porn

Driven by demand and veiled by the dark web, the creation and circulation of child pornography has seen an alarming rise in India—now the biggest uploader of child sexual imagery in the world.

- Sonali Acharjee

Last October, Prajwala, a Hyderabad-based NGO that rescues and rehabilitates sex trafficking survivors, came across some disturbing footage of child pornography on the internet. When Sunitha Krishnan, co-founder of Prajwala, went to meet a child featured in it, she expected a scared, silent, suspicious person. Instead, she found a cherubic 12-year-old girl, bursting with enthusiasm. Praniti (name changed) was no problem child. She attended school, was polite and never begged for chips or soda. She would chat with a close friend online, someone her parents assumed was from school. Nothing prepared them for the discovery that the person was a stranger and that sexually explicit photographs of their daughter were all over the internet. Praniti’s reaction was different. There was only denial. “She was adamant this person was her friend, that she had done nothing wrong,” says Krishnan. The biggest threat in children being ‘groomed’ through the internet is the complete transfer of trust from the prey to the predator. It destroys the construct of victimhood in a child’s mind. “The child doesn’t know he or she is being exploited. Imagine a childhood spent grappling with the notion of betrayal and abuse,” says Krishnan.

Cyber grooming of the very young, like Praniti, is the newest threat in a booming online child pornography market that has reached alarming proportions in India (see