Madhya Pradesh Home Minister blames porn sites for rapes

Madhya Pradesh Home Minister Bhupendra Singh has blamed pornographic websites for the rising cases of rapes in India. Singh claimed that his ministry has conducted a survey which revealed that easy availability of pornographic content and porn websites were responsible for such crimes.

He added that he has written to the Union Home Ministry seeking a ban on porn sites. Singh's comments come at a time when there have been massive protests across the country over a spate of rape cases, many of them against children as young as a few months.

In Indore, a six-month-old infant was raped and killed on Friday in the basement of a building. The accused is the victim's uncle. Identified as Sunil Bheel (21), the accused was caught on CCTV camera, at around 4.45 am on Friday, carrying the infant on his shoulder. He had an argument with the victim's mother after which he allegedly committed the crime.

The post-mortem of the infant, which was carried out at the state-run MY Hospital in Indore, suggested that she might have been raped before being killed as her private parts bore an injury mark, a source said.

Commenting on the crime in Indore, Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chauhan on Saturday said that in 92 percent of cases, minor girls were raped by a close relative.

"The Indore incident has left me distressed. How can someone do something so terrible to a little girl? Society needs to peep within themselves. The administration has taken quick action and arrested the accused. We will ensure that he gets severe punishment without delay," he tweeted.

In another such alleged case which has led to massive uproar across India, an eight-year-old girl from the nomadic Bakarwal community was abducted, sedated, gang-raped for several days and later killed by a group of men in Jammu and Kashmir's Kathua district.