DGV - INFORMATIVE NEWS
Information
date : 20.12.2004.
Several
boys studying at the Delhi Public School (DPS) exchanged explicit photo clips
of a female student engaged in a lewd act with a classmate on their cellular
phones in the middle of last month.
Since
then the two-and-a-half-minute Multimedia Message Service (MMS) clip has been
blown into a huge scandal with the police, parents, educationists, sociologists
and others joining the fray to take measure of the changing mores of new-age
youngsters who are now doubly armed with hefty allowances and access to a
“bare-all, dare-all” Internet.
Within
days, the MMS clip featuring the two students from one of Delhi's more
prominent public schools found its way into the underground pornography market.
Unscrupulous
smut VCD and DVD dealers transferred the short clip onto magnetic tape.
Combining
it with the latest scandal involving a 17-year-old schoolgirl from Jammu who
was videotaped having sex with a photographer in a cheap hotel, they sold it
like hot cakes, calling it the DPS MMS Clip.
Because
the boy and girl involved in the DPS scandal belonged to upper crust families,
because the more than 60-year-old school had a cachet about it with parents
going to great lengths to get their children admitted in it and because there
was a voyeur inside most sexually repressed Indians, the demand for the short
clip which the errant boy had filmed using his cellular phone camera was
tremendous.
Initially,
the clip of the girl performing a sexual act on the boy sold only for Rs40
(RM3.45) but when the scandal became the talk of the town its price shot up to
Rs200 (RM17.30).
In
days after the scandal made headlines, Delhi’s chattering classes was divided
between those who had seen the clip and those who had not.
The
school's management was embarrassed into summarily expelling the two students
who had brought it notoriety.
Though
no names were given, the media followed their trail given the tremendous
curiosity the salacious escapade had aroused in the lay society.
The
boy belonged to an upper crust South Delhi business family and played for the
Under–17 Delhi Cricket Team in the All India Inter-School Competition.
The
girl was the daughter of a senior Indian Army officer whose family felt so
disgraced by the scandal that they soon packed her off to a distant relative in
faraway Canada.
There
were reports that her father was so shattered by the “dishonour” she had
brought to the family that he suffered a heart attack and had to be admitted
into a specialist heart institute.
The
boy found admission in yet another prestigious school in Delhi, thanks to the
pull of his rich parents.
Though
he had not only filmed the sex act on his mobile phone but had also transmitted
it to his friends, surprisingly the police did not take any action against
him.
The
law does not distinguish between juvenile and major offenders except that they
could be charged under the Juvenile Act.
In
fact, even the girl could have been booked for indulging in an obscene act even
though she was filmed doing so without her knowledge.
The
scandal, however, showed no sign of receding from the front pages.
Even
as the police went after the sellers of the CDs and seized a whole lot of them,
its traders surfaced on the Internet.
A
popular website which facilitates the sale and purchase of all things Internet
users want to sell or buy had been used to hawk the CDs.
The
Delhi police first tracked down the eight buyers, including two from the
capital, who had bought the CDs through the Internet portal.
The
Information Technology Act empowers the police to prosecute the maker, seller
and buyer of Internet pornography.
Eventually,
the police traced the seller of the CDs on the portal to the prestigious Indian
Institute of Technology, Kharagpur.
The
arrested student was remanded by a Delhi court on Dec 16 after the prosecution
claimed he had put the CD on sale and had earlier sold pornographic literature
on the Internet.
The
student told the court that he did it “for fun and to make a fast buck” and
that he did not know that it was against the law to do so since the Internet
was full of pornographic sites anyway and he had not heard of anyone taking
action against those running them.
The
scandal led to some public hand-wringing by notable elders who predictably
thought that they had lived in pristine purity in their younger days.
Sociologists
talked of the sexually repressed Indian society and the resulting
voyeurism.
Others
disagreed, citing how former US president Bill Clinton's affair with former
White House intern Monica Lewinsky had been the top story in the sexually
liberated US.
Middle
and upper income parents came in for sharp criticism for spoiling their children.
A
recent survey by the NGO, Centre of Advocacy and Research, revealed that 75% of
parents felt that regulating the behaviour of children should begin at home.
“Once
parents take the decision to give their children access to technology, they
should take the responsibility for it too.”
Following
the scandal, the DPS and a couple of other schools in Delhi banned the use of
cellular phones by their students.
The
scandal also caused another NGO to survey the student population in the capital
for its sexual awareness and activities.
It
came up with the astounding finding that more than half the student population
from the class ninth upwards was sexually active.
The reasons cited for growing promiscuity among students were the role of Internet, foreign TV channels, easy availability of pornographic material and lax parental control, and the absence of moral education in the school syllabi, etc.
