NCPCR to probe Meta over child abuse ads on Instagram

India's National Commission for Protection of Child Rights has instituted a formal inquiry into Meta Platforms, Inc. after finding that Meta's written response to a July notice did not close the matter, per YourStory. The inquiry concerns allegations that paid advertisements containing explicit terms appeared on Instagram in India and directed users to Telegram channels where Child Sexual Exploitative and Abuse Material, or CSEAM, was allegedly being sold.

The Commission took suo motu cognisance of a BBC Eye investigation that first surfaced the allegations, then issued a notice to Meta on 3 July 2026. Meta filed its reply roughly a week later. After reviewing that response, the NCPCR decided the facts needed to be independently established, escalating the matter from a preliminary explanation-seeking exercise to a full fact-finding process, according to YourStory. The inquiry runs in parallel with a separate line of action by India's Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology, which issued its own notice to Meta on 4 July 2026 after Union Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw directed officials to summon the company. IT Secretary S Krishnan confirmed on 13 July 2026 that Meta's reply to MeitY had been received and was under examination.

The NCPCR is a statutory body constituted under the Commissions for Protection of Child Rights Act, 2005, and is mandated to monitor implementation of the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act, 2012, the Juvenile Justice Act, 2015, and the Right to Education Act, 2009. Its powers include summoning records and examining witnesses — tools that now apply to the same set of facts already before MeitY.

The central issue is not whether the violating advertisements existed — Meta has acknowledged that they did — but how they cleared a paid advertising pipeline the company says involves both automated and manual review before publication, plus continuous monitoring after an ad goes live. Legal experts cited by YourStory note that paid advertisements may attract sharper scrutiny than ordinary user posts because a platform actively reviews, approves, distributes, and earns revenue from them. Section 67B of the Information Technology Act makes publishing or transmitting material depicting children in sexually explicit acts in electronic form a punishable offence.

In a blog post published on 7 July 2026, Meta described child exploitation as a "horrific crime" and said it maintains a zero-tolerance policy. The company disclosed it removed around 40 lakh accounts and roughly 3.6 crore pieces of content linked to child exploitation globally in the first half of 2026, and disabled approximately 1.6 lakh accounts in India over the same period. Meta added that more than 96% of such content is detected before any user reports it, and that some of the violating advertisements had been actioned by its own systems before the BBC Eye investigation was shared with the company. Separately, Telegram said it removed more than 2.74 lakh groups and channels promoting such material during 2026, per YourStory.

With the NCPCR inquiry now open, a second Indian authority holds an active file on the same facts. For the broader platform economy in India, YourStory notes the outcome will indicate how far regulators are willing to treat advertising systems as a distinct area of liability, separate from the safe-harbour arguments platforms typically invoke for user-generated content.