Determined to Combat Online Sexual Exploitation of Children, Kerala Police Teams Up With Interpol

The International Criminal Police Organization or Interpol has teamed up with a unit of the Kerala Police to counter global online child sexual exploitation and will train the state police in capacity building. Guillermo Galarza, programme director at International Center for Missing and Exploited Children and John Rouse, senior detective, Queensland Police, were on a day's visit to the Kerala Police Cyberdome in Thiruvananthapuram on Monday.

An interpol team had visited Kerala six months ago and conducted the first training session, following which the Kerala Police set up a special unit to counter online child abuse. The Interpol team will hold further training sessions in September this year and February 2020, with the aim to build capacity, equip the state unit with resources and technology to deal with cases of online sexual exploitation.

With the help of a software provided by the Interpol the state police has arrested at least 28 people across Kerala for online child pornography since the special unit began functioning. The software helps trace the IP addresses of those uploading, viewing and downloading child pornography.

Highlighting the measures being taken to deal with the online expolitation, DGP Loknath Behra said, "Child pornography or exploitation of children has to be punished. We will be giving a separate office for the child sexual exploitation unit in Thiruvanthapuram. The aim is to build capacity both human resources and also technology. We are looking at having a toll free number for this."​

ADGP South Zone, Manoj Abraham, who is also in charge of the special unit said, "Further training have been slated for two days in September and two weeks in February. forensic unit will be given training on how to get data from encrypted devices. Police officers will be given training on how to use data from different tools that will be provided by the Interpol."

Stating that over 2.4 million reports of online exploitation have been sent to India, Galarza said that Kerala is the only state which has set up a separate team to deal with such cases. He informed that the child sex offenders are using latest technology and to combat this the Interpol plans to bring into use advanced tools. "We want to thank Kerala Police. We are going to bring additional tools, additional capacity to fight these offenders. Because it takes a network to defeat a network. We are seeing the worst of the worst — child pornography, child exploitation, child trafficking , obscene materials of children. This year so far we had sent about 2.4 million reports."

Galarza further claimed that the reports have not been sent to the states so far and said that the international organisation will ensure that they reach the states from now on. "Those reports have never made it to Kerala or to any other state. We have signed an MoU with the National Crime Records Bureau and now when they send reports, it will be sent to the states," Galarza said.

A lot of criminal activities take place on the dark net and to counter these the the Interpol will share the software they use with Kerala Police. With these software and tools the state unit hopes to deal with child sexual exploitation more effectively​.