The National Commission for Protection of Child Rights (NCPCR) has summoned Meta India Managing Director and Country Head Arun Srinivas for a hearing on September 9 over allegations that paid Instagram advertisements linked to child sexual abuse material (CSAM) were being displayed in India.
The inquiry follows a July 3 BBC Eye investigation that found advertisements using terms associated with child sexual abuse and directing users to Telegram channels where such material was allegedly being sold. The NCPCR had initially sought an explanation and documents from Meta before deciding to institute a formal inquiry after receiving the company’s response.
The hearing, led by NCPCR chairperson Valeti Premchand in New Delhi, is expected to examine how the advertisements cleared Instagram’s moderation systems, what safeguards Meta had in place and what action it took after the allegations emerged.
A Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) representative is also expected to attend, with technical issues around Meta’s advertising and recommendation systems likely to come under scrutiny.
Separately, MeitY had earlier directed Instagram to disable advertisements promoting or facilitating access to CSAM. IT Secretary S Krishnan said in July that Meta’s response to the government’s notice was “currently under examination” and that “appropriate action” would follow after scrutiny.
How The Ads Got Through
The NCPCR’s inquiry centres on a basic but crucial question: how could advertisements allegedly facilitating access to CSAM make it through a platform’s advertising review process?
The BBC Eye investigation reported on July 3 that it had found paid Instagram advertisements using phrases including “rape video” and “child video”, with links directing users to Telegram channels where the material was allegedly available for as little as ₹99.
The investigation also reported that advertisements are subject to moderation technology before publication, yet when the BBC reported one of the advertisements to Instagram, the platform initially responded around 24 hours later that it did not violate its guidelines.
Meta subsequently said it had already identified and disabled several violating advertisements and the accounts behind them, while its investigation following the BBC’s findings led to further advertisements being removed, accounts being disabled and related URLs being blocked.
The company has rejected the suggestion that it knowingly or deliberately targeted such advertisements at people based on an inappropriate interest in children, calling that suggestion “categorically inaccurate”.
Meta has also pointed to the scale of its enforcement systems, saying it automatically removed more than four million suspicious accounts from Facebook and Instagram in 2025 and removed 36 million pieces of content containing child exploitation.
However, the NCPCR hearing is likely to focus less on those overall figures and more on why the specific advertisements identified in the investigation were able to appear in the first place.
From BBC Report To Government Action
The September 9 hearing is the latest development in a case that has already triggered action from several Indian authorities. On July 3, shortly after the BBC Eye report, the NCPCR took suo motu cognisance of the allegations and issued a notice to Meta Platforms seeking an explanation and documents.
Meta responded about a week later, following which the Commission decided to institute a formal inquiry to establish the facts. MeitY separately issued a notice directing Instagram to disable advertisements and content promoting or facilitating access to CSAM and sought a detailed explanation from Meta on how such paid advertisements were allowed to appear.
When Meta submitted its response, IT Secretary S Krishnan said: “On the CSAM content, we had issued a notice to Meta, and the reply has been received. It is currently under examination.” He added that “appropriate action” would be taken after the response was examined.
The scrutiny has since widened. The National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) has also sought reports from MeitY, the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting and the Delhi Police over allegations concerning Instagram advertisements promoting or facilitating access to CSAM, while Delhi Police has been asked to examine the matter.
Meanwhile, fresh research published on September 8 by the Tech Transparency Project has raised broader concerns about Meta’s ability to prevent AI-generated child sexual abuse imagery from appearing in advertisements.
WIRED reported that researchers had identified hundreds of such advertisements across Meta’s platforms, including some involving manipulated images of real children. These findings are separate from the Indian NCPCR case, but add to wider questions about the effectiveness of automated advertising safeguards.
The Logical Indian’s Perspective
Children deserve to be protected online with the same seriousness with which society seeks to protect them offline. The allegations surrounding Instagram are deeply disturbing, but the focus should not stop at finding individual offenders; it must also examine whether technology platforms, regulators and law-enforcement agencies have systems capable of identifying, removing and reporting such material quickly and effectively.
Meta has said it has a zero-tolerance approach to child exploitation and has invested heavily in automated detection, while the government has made clear that it expects platforms to comply with India’s child-protection framework. The NCPCR inquiry is therefore an important opportunity for all stakeholders to move beyond statements and demonstrate what actually went wrong, what has been fixed and how similar failures will be prevented.
Also read: Jharkhand HC: Entering Woman’s Home, Lifting Clothes Not Enough To Prove Attempt To Rape
