Cops block clips of controversial film

The Cyber Crime Investigation Cell (CCIC) of the Mumbai crime branch blocked and deleted around 89 videos about controversial movie Innocence of Islam on YouTube and other video sharing websites. The Mumbai police had, in September, registered a case against five Americans involved with the making of the movie as it might have provoked a law and order situation in the city. The CCIC said that the videos had been uploaded from IP addresses that were traced to Pakistan, Bangladesh and the US.

Innocence of Islam, which has been termed as an anti-Islamic film, is produced and directed by America-based Sam Basil. The movie, which apparently has nothing to do with Islam, portrays Prophet Mohammed in a bad light and had sparked outrage amongst the Muslim population all over the world.

The Mumbai police are preparing to send a Letter Rogatory (LR) to the US, Pakistan and Afghanistan courts asking for assistance from their police teams in investigating the matter. Explaining the process of sending the LR, an officer from CCIC said that the letter would be sent from the Esplanade court to the Interpol and from there to the courts of the respective countries.

“We try to keep a day-to-day tab on the internet for any controversial or malicious content. However, the traffic on the internet is so voluminous that keeping a 100 % tab is impossible,” said Niket Kaushik, additional commissioner of police (crime).
Kaushik added that they had sent a request to confirm the location of the IP addresses by Delhi-based Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT) to the service providers. However, they are yet to receive a response. “It is after we receive a reply from these service providers that we will start the process of sending a LR,” he said.

For now, the CCIC is concentrating on keeping the controversial videos off the internet.