NEW DELHI — India's government told the Supreme Court that it needed more time to formulate a means of blocking international porn sites from being accessed within the country.
A bench headed by Chief Justice Altamas Kabir granted four weeks time to the Information and Broadcasting Ministry and others to devise a mechanism to block the sites, particularly those suspected of purveying child pornography.
Solicitor General Indira Jaising sought more time to respond to the petition filed by antiporn advocate Kamlesh Vaswani, who called it a "serious" issue.
Vaswani said that although watching explicit videos is not currently illegal in India, porn sites should be banned because “most of the offenses committed against women, girls and children are fuelled by pornography.”
Another antiporn advocate, Vijay Panjwani, said that the absence of federal governance of the Internet encouraged the rampant increase of available porn sites in India.
Panjwani estimated that there are more than 4 million porn videos and clipping freely accessible to Indian citizens.