The Centre on Monday told the Supreme Court that it currently had no mechanism in place to stop the upload of obscene content and sexual assault videos on websites. Appearing before a bench of justices MB Lokur and UU Lalit, the government said it depended on law and order agencies being informed about such videos to stop their distribution, PTI reported. “There are preventive mechanisms,” the lawyer for the Centre told the bench.

The government’s submission came after Google India said that it was almost impossible to trace a person before they uploaded such content on any website. However, Google could take action if a person was uploading videos repeatedly, a lawyer for the company told the court. The apex court has posted the matter for its next hearing on March 3.

On December 5, the court issued notices to Facebook, Google, Microsoft and Yahoo on the sharing of sexual assault videos. The bench of justices Lokur and Lalit had sought the companies’ views on how to end the circulation of such video clips, block them and report the incidents to investigating agencies. The notices were issued based on a public interest litigation filed by activist Sunitha Krishnan. In her plea, Krishnan had sought an investigation into the issue by a central agency as well as directions to the Centre on the matter.

The CBI had then said that it was ready to “take up the requisite responsibility” of being the “single central institutional mechanism to address cases relating to video recordings of incidents of sexual violence against women and children”. However, the bench said that the CBI could not investigate a person on the cyber crime-related aspects of a sexual assault case if the police was not able to find any evidence of the individuals involvement in the case.