New Delhi, July 3: Minister of Electronics and Information Technology, Ahswini Vaishnaw has directed officials in his Ministry to summon Meta over Instagram ads promoting child sexual abuse material, sources said on Friday.
Sources in the know said that MeitY will seek explanation from Meta on the issue.
According to a report by BBC, Instagram has been running paid adverts promoting child sexual abuse material in India.
A BBC Eye investigation has found that the ads, seen by the BBC World Service, use terms including “rape video” and “child video” and link users to channels on the messaging app Telegram, where they can buy the material for as little as ₹99.
Disabled Accounts
Ads on Instagram are only published after first being approved by its moderation technology.
Meanwhile, BBC report said that Meta has informed it had already disabled several adverts and suspended the accounts posting them. Meta added that it had removed additional ads, disabled more accounts and blocked URLs for other content that violated its policies.
Telegram has also informed that it had removed more than 2.74 lakh groups and channels related to child sexual abuse material in 2026. The platform was recently banned for a week in India during the NEET-UG exams sighting it allowing users to edit content retrospectively in a manner that could be exploited to manipulate records and facilitate scams.
Second Instance
Senior government officials also said then that Telegram was involved in child sexual abuse material, drug trafficking, fake investment advisories and “digital arrest” scams.
This was the second instance this week when the Centre has turned up the heat on Meta.
Sources said Meta team also met MeitY officials on Friday following the notice summoning them on the issue of roll-out of the “usernames” feature on WhatsApp in India.
“Ministry officials sensitised them about the government’s concern relating to the feature. As the timeline for furnishing the detailed explanation on the ‘usernames’ feature is for three days, they will submit their final reply as per the schedule,” one of the sources said.
Published on July 3, 2026
