In a ruling delivered 2026-10-15, the Supreme Court returns to a promise it made two years ago and finds the promise broken. Social media platforms were told in 2024 to report child sexual abuse material to the police, not just quietly delete it. Many did not. This week's 136-page order is the Court's answer.

The case concerns POCSO Act reporting duties and the liability of online intermediaries (companies that host content other people post). If you have a child with a phone, this is about the phone in your child's hand.

Just Rights for Children Alliance v. S. Harish: Where This Began

The order is Just Rights for Children Alliance & Anr. v. S. Harish & Ors., M.A. Nos. 2553-2554 of 2026 in Criminal Appeal Nos. 2161-2162 of 2024, reported as 2026 INSC 1149. It is marked reportable, meaning lower courts must take note of it.

The story starts with the Court's judgment of 23.09.2024, reported as 2024 INSC 716. There, the Court noticed what it called an alarming increase in child sexual exploitation and abuse material, which it shortens to "CSEAM", circulating on social media.

One paragraph of that judgment, paragraph 109, still reads like testimony. It records a news report that links to child pornography were being sold on social media "for anywhere between Rs. 40 to Rs. 5,000."

"By indefinitely forwarding links, they completely bypass the requirement of first storing such material onto any device, and similarly those who view such material also only use the links, without ever downloading such material onto their device."

Forty rupees. Less than a cup of tea and a samosa at some stalls. The sellers had found a gap. The law punished storing the material, so they sold only links, and nobody downloaded anything.

Section 79 of the IT Act and the Duty to Report Under POCSO

Section 79 of the Information Technology Act, 2000 is a shield. It protects platforms from being blamed for what their users post, provided they follow certain rules. Platforms have long treated it as a comfortable wall to stand behind.

In 2024 the Court put a door in that wall. At paragraph 256, quoted again in this week's order, it held that a platform cannot claim the Section 79 exemption unless it complies with Sections 19 and 20 of the POCSO Act read with Rule 11 of the POCSO Rules. That due diligence, the Court said, "includes not only removal of child pornographic content but also making an immediate report of such content to the concerned police units."

Paragraph 258 went further. Because the POCSO Act has overriding effect, simply ticking the Section 79 boxes "will not absolve it of any liability under the POCSO." The Court applied an old rule of law: when a statute says a thing must be done in a certain way, "it should be done in that manner or not at all."

The Court also noted that platforms were reporting under an MOU (a private agreement) instead of to the Special Juvenile Police Unit named in the law. That is the habit the 2024 judgment tried to break.

What Went Wrong After 2024

On 14.08.2026, the Court passed an order expressing concern over "certain serious lapses" by various social media intermediaries in following the 2024 directions. This week's order follows that warning. The Court heard counsel for the applicants and Solicitor General Tushar Mehta for the Union of India.

The order's own table of contents tells you where the Court's attention went. It is a map of everything the Court thinks is broken. Among the headings:

Hash and URL matching. A "hash" is a digital fingerprint of a file. If a known abuse image has a recorded fingerprint, a platform can spot copies automatically. A URL list does the same for web addresses. The order examines "Some Problems in the Existing Mechanism" and "The Position in India."

A national database. The Court discusses the need for a national database of hash and URL lists, and the Indian Cyber Crime Coordination Centre's Sahyog Portal. It also addresses safeguards and a standard operating procedure for how such a database is maintained and used, including a distinction between material of "unknown origin" and "known origin."

Notice and grievance redress. The order deals with proper notice, dedicated grievance officers for CSEAM, the proper authority and timelines for reporting, and the need for a prescribed form for platforms to report.

A misreading of 2024. One heading is pointed: "Misconception on what constitutes 'CSEAM' and Misreading of our decision in Just Rights." The Court plainly believes someone has been reading its judgment the convenient way.

Fines, Profits and Moving Beyond Section 79

This is where the order bites. Under the heading "Penalties for persistent failures by Intermediaries," the Court writes of the "Need to rethink and move beyond Section 79 of the IT Act."

It goes on to "Exemplary Monetary Fines and Penalties," and then to "Scrutiny and Disgorgement of 'Profits' from Paywalled Content." Disgorgement means forcing someone to give up money they made from wrongdoing. Put simply, the Court is looking at the money trail behind content locked behind a payment screen.

My view: this is the right instinct. For years the debate has been about takedowns, as if deleting a file ends the harm. Paragraph 109 showed that the harm is a market. Markets respond to cost. A shield that never costs anything is not a safeguard. It is a subsidy.

Article 21, the Internet and the Child

The Court does not treat this only as a policing problem. A section titled "Article 21 and the Right to Access Internet" sits inside the order. Article 21 is the constitutional guarantee of life and personal liberty.

Another section addresses "Awareness on Digital Safety, Sex Education and Measures to support Wellbeing of Children." The order closes with a summary of conclusions beginning at page 122.

That pairing matters. A court worried about abuse could have reached for bans. Instead, by its own structure, the order holds safety and access side by side, with safeguards and grievance rights built into any database scheme. Fewer blunt tools, more precise ones.

Why a Family Law Desk Is Covering This

I usually write about partition suits and coparcenary shares, about families that break apart over land. Those cases are about who inherits what. This one is about what children inherit from the adults who built their world.

Read the record as a set of voices. The seller at paragraph 109 offers a link for forty rupees. The platform answers to an MOU instead of the police. The statute, Section 20 of POCSO, says report it. The Court, twice now, says the same thing more loudly.

The child says nothing in this record. The child is never in the courtroom. That silence is the whole case.

Readers following our earlier coverage of POCSO bail rulings and the IT Rules on grievance officers will recognise the thread. Child protection law in India keeps running into the same wall: compliance that exists on paper and nowhere else.

What Changes Now

For parents, the message is that a platform's duty does not end at the delete button. Abuse material must reach the police unit the law names.

For platforms, the 2024 judgment was a warning and the 14.08.2026 order a second one. This week's order discusses fines, profit scrutiny, prescribed reporting forms and fixed timelines. Companies that still treat Section 79 as a permanent alibi are reading a law the Supreme Court says no longer exists in that form.

And for the rest of us, the forty-rupee link is the number to remember. The Court has.