February 8 / 2026 / Reading Time: 3 minutes
Indian police praised for major child abuse crackdown
Indian police have been commended by global child safety experts for conducting one of the country’s biggest ever operations to safeguard children from the worldwide problem of sexual abuse.
Childlight, the global child safety institute hosted by the University of Edinburgh, Scotland and University of South Wales, Australia, works in partnership with Kerala Police. It said the successful operation showed what could be achieved through determination and innovation.
It has emerged that the "P-Hunt" by Kerala Police on Thursday (February 5) led to more than 660 raids, 26 arrests, and 175 cases now registered for further investigation. There were also 18 notices served which could lead to arrests pending forensic examination.
In many cases those people arrested were believed to have been selling sexual images of children for profit in a trade worth billions of dollars all over the world.
Kerala Police announced that its Counter Child Sexual Exploitation Centre operation led to the seizure of 431 devices, including mobile phones, memory cards, hard drives and laptops containing abuse material of children. Possession of sexually explicit images of children is an offence under India’s Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (POCSO) law, IT ACT, and BNS law.
The volume of sexual abuse images online, including on social media, file sharing apps and gaming devices has grown sharply in recent years.
Childlight, whose first global estimate of the problem indicated that over 300 million children are subjected to online sexual abuse each year, warned that the sexual exploitation and abuse of children can cause lifelong trauma. It has been linked to depression, self-harm, problems at school and difficulties forming relationships and holding down jobs later in life. It said the harm often continues each time abuse material is shared or viewed but stressed that the problem is preventable.
Kelvin Lay, MBE, a former senior UK National Crime Agency officer and director of Childlight’s Technical Advisory Programme, said: “Child sexual exploitation and abuse is a global health crisis affecting every country in the world.
“While huge volumes of data now highlight the scale of this issue, most countries lack the capacity or capability to respond effectively. This operation by Kerala Police demonstrates what is possible when law enforcement prioritises child protection with both resources and innovation.”
He added: “Childlight is proud to partner with Kerala Police on its data-backed child protection efforts, and we hope this collaborative model inspires other jurisdictions worldwide to follow their lead in taking decisive action to address this issue.”
The National Centre for Missing and Exploited Children, which collates reports of child abuse material detected by tech platforms, received reports of more than 20 million abuse images globally in 2024. More than 2 million of these related to India. However, India hosts the lowest amount per head of population among South Asian countries.
Childlight partners with Kerala Police and other organisations globally on data evaluation, harm measurement and knowledge exchange on victim identification practices. Its partnership with Kerala Police began in 2023 over the c0c0n conference – Asia’s largest cybersecurity gathering. More recently, the organisations worked together closely to spotlight the need for child sexual abuse prevention with a dedicated track at c0c0n’s 2025 edition in Kochi.
The collaboration involved a DevOps Hackathon that led to the development of two AI tools to assist in child sexual abuse investigations, as well as a victim identification training with police from 19 states and representatives from the India Cybercrime Coordination Centre and the Central Bureau of Investigation. These were jointly delivered with another c0c0n partner, Kindred Tech, whose AI-powered case prioritisation and triage tool, Katalyst, is designed to strengthen the handling of cases of online child sexual exploitation and abuse.
Lay added: “With its strong track record in data transparency, India can be a data beacon for the South Asia region and world. Childlight will continue to support Kerala Police and beyond to ensure that data turns into action to safeguard children.”