Open Access Research Article
DIGITAL SEXUAL ABUSE OF CHILDREN: EMERGING CHALLENGES UNDER THE POCSO FRAMEWORK
Abstract
ABSTRACT
The migration of child sexual abuse
from physical to digital spaces has exposed structural limitations in a
statutory framework — the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act, 2012
(POCSO) — conceived principally to address contact and proximate offences. This
paper undertakes a doctrinal and analytical examination of the challenges that
digitisation poses to the POCSO framework, situating the Act within the wider
matrix of the Information Technology Act, 2000, the Juvenile Justice Act, 2015,
and the newly notified Information Technology (Intermediary Guidelines and
Digital Media Ethics Code) Amendment Rules, 2026. It traces the Supreme Court's
landmark September 2024 ruling in S. Harish v. State of Tamil Nadu, which
overturned a widely criticised Madras High Court decision and held that mere
viewing, downloading and storage of child sexual abuse material constitutes an
offence under Section 15 of the POCSO Act and Section 67B of the Information
Technology Act, 2000 — a ruling that
also directed courts to abandon the term 'child pornography' in favour of
'Child Sexual Exploitative and Abuse Material' (CSEAM), better reflecting the
abuse inherent in such material. The paper further examines the graded
liability structure introduced by the 2019 Amendment to Section 15, the
persistent definitional gap concerning artificial-intelligence-generated and
deepfake material depicting children, and the intermediary due-diligence and
takedown obligations introduced by the 2026 IT Rules for 'synthetically generated
information'. Drawing on comparative material from recent United States
prosecutions involving AI-generated abuse material, and on Parliamentary data
showing a 94.47 per cent increase in registered POCSO cases between 2017 and
2023, the paper identifies encryption-driven detection gaps, cross-border
jurisdictional limitations, under-utilisation of the mandatory reporting
obligation under Sections 19 and 20, and definitional ambiguity surrounding
synthetic content as the principal unresolved challenges. It concludes with
recommendations for statutory clarification of AI-generated CSAM, strengthened intermediary accountability, and institutional capacity-building to close the gap between an increasingly
protective judicial posture and the practical realities of digital enforcement.
Published Paper
Author Details
Authors: KISHORE CHIMMILI
Registration ID: 1013061 | Published Paper ID: IJLRA13061 & IJLRA13062
Year: Aug-2026 | Volume: 3 | Issue: 5
Approved ISSN: 2582-6433 | Country: Delhi, India
Page No.: 1659-1677
Article Information
DIGITAL SEXUAL ABUSE OF CHILDREN: EMERGING CHALLENGES UNDER THE POCSO FRAMEWORK
Authors: KISHORE CHIMMILI
- Journal IJLRA
- ISSN 2582-6433
- Volume 3
- Issue 5
About Journal
International Journal for Legal Research and Analysis
- AbbreviationIJLRA
- ISSN2582-6433
- AccessOpen Access
- LicenseCC 4.0
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