Sahyog Portal could detect, remove child abuse material: Supreme Court

The Supreme Court has said the Union government’s Sahyog Portal can provide the “foundation for a national database to detect and remove child sexual exploitation and abuse material (CSEAM) across online platforms”.

The observation comes as the portal itself faces legal challenges before the Supreme Court and several high courts and the court has called for “coordinated mechanisms to detect and remove” CSEAM from online platforms.

In its order passed on October 15, a bench of justices JB Pardiwala and K Vinod Chandran said the Sahyog Portal could provide the “foundation for such a database”. The database will contain verified digital fingerprints, known as hashes, and URLs of CSEAM, allowing intermediaries to identify and remove known material across platforms.

“We acknowledge that the Sahyog Portal is, no doubt, a step in the right direction. It is also not lost on us that the portal, by virtue of having already onboarded a considerable number of intermediaries, may well be the natural foundation upon which a Hash & URL List Database could be built,” the Supreme Court said.

The court added that it was aware that the Sahyog portal currently worked only as a common platform for routing individual reports and takedown notices, and so it acts on CSEAM only when each instance is reported.

However, the portal could do much more, the court said as long as the Union government “shared its vision” with that of the court’s expressed in the present order.

“Our expectations from the portal, however, are much more than what it is, as of now, capable of doing, and we are hopeful that the Union of India shares the same vision,” it said.

To prevent wrongful takedowns, the court said each entry must undergo multiple levels of verification, with at least three trained human analysts independently confirming that the material constitutes CSEAM. The database must store only digital identifiers and URLs, not the material itself, and authorities must maintain audit records and correct erroneous entries.

The court said the existing system relied heavily on individual complaints and separate detection mechanisms maintained by platforms. As a result, removing material from one platform did not ensure its removal elsewhere, allowing it to continue circulating across the internet.

It, however, directed the Union government to frame guidelines and standard operating procedures to strengthen the detection, removal and reporting of CSEAM, including through amendments to the Information Technology Act and IT Rules, wherever necessary.

Platforms must promptly remove material that matches a verified database entry and provide users with a notice explaining the basis for removal, the Court said.

It also called for an accessible grievance-redressal mechanism, with a distinct category for CSEAM complaints that users can reach within two steps from the content, profile, group or link concerned. Grievance officers must receive regular training to identify such material, including content that may not appear explicit on its face.

The Court said intermediaries must report CSEAM to Indian law enforcement authorities, including the Special Juvenile Police Unit and local police, rather than merely reporting it to foreign organisations. Material of unknown origin removed following a complaint must be reported within two hours of resolving the complaint. Platforms must also report removals made through their own detection mechanisms or following a court or government direction within two hours of removal. Database-match removals must feature in consolidated weekly reports.

The constitutional validity of the Sahyog portal has been challenged by several parties including the social media platform X corp.

In September last year, a single bench of the Karnataka high court had upheld the constitutional validity of the portal. X Corp had then challenged the single judge’s order.

The Supreme Court subsequently stayed a batch of such proceedings against Sahyog, including the appeal pending before the Karnataka high court and two pleas pending before the Bombay high court, including one filed by stand up comedian Kunal Kamra, challenging the constitutional validity of the central content-takedown mechanism.

The court halted these proceedings in August following a transfer petition filed by the Union government that was seeking to consolidate all parallel challenges into a single, unified adjudication before the apex court to prevent conflicting judicial rulings on the intersection of the portal, Section 79(3)(b) of the IT Act, and online freedom of speech.

It directed platforms to examine the broader context of advertisements and links, including captions, keywords and the purpose of tools being promoted. Their obligations may extend to advertisements for applications that manipulate children’s photographs into sexually exploitative material and links that redirect users to websites hosting such content.

It asked the government to consider “exemplary” monetary penalties “proportionate to the gravity and recurrence of violations”, as well as an intermediary’s size and turnover. It also called for the disgorgement of revenue earned from CSEAM circulated through paywalls or subscriptions, in addition to applicable fines. It directed the government to file an affidavit detailing progress towards compliance by the next hearing on December 10, 2026.