|
Teen sex video sold online exposes changes in India
By Vijay Joshi
December 26, 2004
New Delhi -- It was a private act of two hormone-charged teenagers that lasted
2 minutes and 37 seconds on digital video.
But offered for sale on the Internet, the fuzzy images of the 17-year-old girl
having oral sex with her high school sweetheart has sent shock waves through
urban India, exposing the growing friction between the conservative middle
class, its increasingly Westernized progeny and modern technology.
"It came to me as a surprise that kids are having sex so soon," said Barkha
Dutt, who hosts a popular television talk show on social issues. "Even we are
not aware of how much things have changed."
India may be the birthplace of Kama Sutra, the sixth century sex manual, but
sex today is a generally taboo subject. Premarital sex is not widely condoned.
Caught in the scandal's stinging sweep is Avnish Bajaj, the Indian-born
American who heads eBay's Indian subsidiary, Baazee.com, where the video clip
-- shot by the schoolboy using his cell phone camera -- was put up for sale.
Arrested last week under an ambiguous Indian law on cyber porn, Bajaj was freed
after posting bail Tuesday, but his U.S. passport has been confiscated.
Bajaj's arrest triggered a diplomatic spat between the United States and India
and a threat by eBay to reconsider doing business in a country that would jail
one of its top managers as a scapegoat.
The sex clip was recorded weeks ago and passed on by the bragging schoolboy to
three of his friends. It eventually made its way to video disc sellers in New
Delhi. It did not draw much attention until an engineering student at a
prestigious Indian college listed it for sale on Baazee.com.
Now the girl's parents have sent her to Canada. The 17-year-old boy, the son of
an affluent businessman, is in a juvenile detention center. A judge ordered him
held until Jan. 4 for questioning to try to determine how the video clip
reached the man who tried to sell it.
The controversy over the clip is typical of a society in transition, said Dr.
Ranjana Kumari, the director of the think tank Center for Social Research.
India's recent economic boom has created unimaginable wealth among the
tech-savvy urban population, who live in a globalized world dominated by the
Internet, international brands and Western lifestyle with its relatively
liberal sexual values.
Kumari says urban India is being pulled apart by these new values and its own
centuries-old social conservatism.
Of greater concern to many in the business community is Bajaj's arrest under
the Information Technology Act of 2000. The law makes a criminal offense of
"publishing, transmitting, or causing to publish any information in electronic
form, which is obscene."
But it also says an Internet provider or Web site manager can't be held
responsible if he acted to remedy the offense after learning of it.
Baazee.com says it yanked the listing as soon as customer service managers
noticed it, and Bajaj had traveled to New Delhi to cooperate with authorities.
Comment on this story,
click here.
Copyright 1999-2004, AsianSexGazette.com. All rights reserved. No
content may be reproduced in whole or part without written permission.
Please contact us via the link below for re-print and syndication policies.
|
|
Sex
and scandal in the world’s fastest growing mobile market
12-26-2004
MMS
porn concerns MPs
12-17-2004
Cops
to arrest DPS 'porn-maker' kid
12-16-2004
|
