The National Commission for Protection of Child Rights on Friday took suo moto cognisance of the child sexual abuse material allegedly being promoted through advertisements on social media platform Instagram following a BBC report.

The panel said it was closely following the matter.

On Friday, the BBC reported that it had found that Instagram had been running paid advertisements that promote child sexual abuse material in India.

Child sexual abuse material is illegal and constitutes a serious criminal offence under the 2000 Information Technology Act and the 2012 Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act.

The advertisements use phrases such as “rape video” and “child video”, and direct users to channels on the messaging application Telegram, where such material can be purchased, the BBC reported.

Advertisements on Instagram are published only after they are approved by its moderation technology.

The BBC said that when it reported one of the advertisements to Instagram, the platform responded that the post had not violated its “community guidelines”.

Meta, the parent company of Instagram, subsequently told the BBC that the material being reported, besides other similar advertisements, had been removed and the accounts posting it were suspended. It also told the BBC that “no system is perfect, and our review process may not detect all policy violations”.

“We continue to run proactive detection technology on ads once they’re live, and anyone can report an ad to us that they think breaks our rules,” the platform was quoted as saying.

Telegram told the BBC that it had removed more than 2.7 lakh groups and channels related to child sexual abuse material this year.

The Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology has summoned Meta executives for an explanation, The Hindu quoted unidentified officials as saying on Friday.

Written by Nachiket Deuskar. Edited by Sara Varghese.