Parliament Question: Law for Cyberbullying

GOVERNMENT OF INDIA MINISTRY OF INFORMATION & BROADCASTING LOK SABHA UNSTARRED QUESTION NO. 2882 TO BE ANSWERED ON 05.08.2026 LAW FOR CYBERBULLYING 2882. SHRI PRABHAKAR REDDY VEMIREDDY: Will the Minister of INFORMATION AND BROADCASTING be pleased to state; (a) whether the Government proposes to enact a dedicated law or issue specific rules defining and addressing cyberbullying, online stalking, impersonation, doxxing and trolling particularly for the protection of children and women and if so, the details thereof; (b) the number of cyberbullying cases registered and resolved during the last five years, year and State-wise; (c) the initiatives taken by the Government to prevent, report and address cyberbullying particularly among children and women; and (d) the details of awareness, training and counselling programmes conducted to prevent cyberbullying among children, women and other vulnerable users along with the number of beneficiaries covered during the last five years, year-wise ? ANSWER THE MINISTER OF STATE FOR INFORMATION AND BROADCASTING AND PARLIAMENTARY AFFAIRS (DR. L. MURUGAN) (a) to (d): The policies of the Government are aimed at ensuring an Open, Safe, Trusted and Accountable Internet for its users, including women and children. The Government is committed to ensure that the Internet in India is free from any form of unlawful content or information, particularly vulgar and obscene content.Information Technology Act, 2000 (IT Act) and the Information Technology (Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code) Rules, 2021 (IT Rules) together provide a comprehensive framework to deal with unlawful and harmful content in the digital space and impose clear obligations on intermediaries to ensure accountability. The IT Rules, 2021 casts due-diligence obligations on intermediaries, including social media intermediaries to make reasonable efforts to ensure that users of their computer resources do not host, display, upload, modify, publish, transmit, store, update or share any information that is obscene, pornographic, pedophilic, harmful to child, invasive of privacy, insulting or harassing on the basis of gender or violates any law for the time being in force. In case of failure of the intermediaries to observe the legal obligations as provided in the IT Rules, 2021, they lose their exemption from third party information provided under section 79 of the IT Act. They are liable for consequential action or prosecution as provided under any extant law. On 10th February, 2026, the Government strengthened the regulatory framework by amending the IT Rules to address harms arising from synthetically generated information (SGI), including deepfakes and AI-generated content. As per the amendments, intermediaries and large social media platforms are required to deploy reasonable technical measures to prevent the creation and dissemination of unlawful AI-generated content, including content that is obscene, misleading, impersonating individuals, or harmful to children. Platforms are also obligated to report to appropriate authorities about the related offences under laws that mandates reporting such as Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita, 2023, or the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act, 2012. The ‘National Cyber Crime Reporting Portal’ (NCRP) (https://cybercrime.gov.in) has been launched, as a part of the Indian Cyber Crime Coordination Centre (I4C), to enable public to report incidents pertaining to all types of cybercrimes. NCRP includes provisions for reporting certain categories of cyber offences against women and children in an anonymous manner. Under the “Report Women/Child Related Crime” module, complainants may choose the “Report Anonymously” option, which allows submission of complaints without disclosure of personal identity details.NCRP has introduced a module titled as ‘Report and Check Suspect’ to enable citizens to report suspicious website URLs, WhatsApp numbers/telegram handles, phone numbers, e-mail ids, SMS headers/numbers, deep fakes and social media URLs. The Government has released financial assistance to the tune of Rs. 132.93 crores under the ‘Cyber Crime Prevention against Women and Children (CCPWC)’ Scheme, to the States/UTs for their capacity building such as setting up of cyber forensic-cum-training laboratories, hiring of junior cyber consultants and training of LEAs’ personnel, public prosecutors and judicial officers. Cyber forensic-cum-training laboratories have been commissioned in 33 States/UTs and more than 24,600 LEA personnel, judicial officers and prosecutors have been provided training on cyber crime awareness, investigation, forensics etc. Indian Cybercrime Coordination Centre (I4C), Ministry of Home Affairs imparted Cyber Hygiene training to more than 2 lakh NCC, NSS & NYKS Students across the country. I4C has released ‘Handbook for Adolescents/Students’ aimed at educating the students on the prevention of cybercrime and ‘Cyber Security Handbook for Mahila Suraksha’ to promote awareness among women. The Government is implementing a project on ‘Information Security Education and Awareness (ISEA)’ for generating human resources in Information Security and creating general awareness on various aspects of cyber hygiene & cyber security among the masses. *****