New Delhi: A parliamentary standing committee has recommended that the government introduce mandatory KYC-based identity verification across all social media, dating, and gaming platforms operating in India, as part of a wide-ranging set of proposals aimed at curbing cybercrimes against women.
The recommendation forms part of the Fourth Report of the Committee on the Empowerment of Women (2025-26), tabled in both the Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha Monday.
The report covers everything from deepfake regulation and forensic capacity to international cooperation and victim rehabilitation, but the KYC proposal is among its more far-reaching suggestions.
“Mandatory KYC-based verification be introduced across all social media, dating and gaming platforms to curb the menace of fake profiles, impersonation and anonymous harassment,” says the report.
It further recommends that platforms carry out periodic re-verification and maintain high-risk flags for accounts repeatedly reported for abuse, with penalties for platforms that fail to protect women and minors.
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Why this, why now
The proposal comes against the backdrop of a sharp and sustained rise in cybercrimes against women in India.
The country has seen explosive growth in internet and smartphone penetration over the past decade, with hundreds of millions of first-time users coming online. While that expansion has brought economic and social benefits, it has also widened the surface area for online abuse.
India currently has no standalone cybercrime law. Online offences are prosecuted under a patchwork of legislation—the Information Technology Act of 2000, the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita of 2023, the POCSO Act, and the Indecent Representation of Women (Prohibition) Act of 1986.
The committee itself describes this framework as “fragmented and ill-equipped to handle the pace of technological change”. The emergence of generative AI tools capable of producing realistic deepfake pornography has added a further dimension to the problem.
The committee, chaired by BJP MP D. Purandeswari, held multiple sittings between June 2025 and March 2026, hearing from the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA), the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY), Google, Meta, Centre for Development of Advanced Computing (C-DAC) experts, and the Cyber Peace Foundation.
Citing National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) data, it notes that cybercrimes against women rose nearly 239 percent between 2017 and 2022, while cases involving children grew twentyfold.
Over 2.48 lakh complaints related to women and children were filed on the National Cyber Crime Reporting Portal between 2019 and April 2025, figures the committee says still understate the true scale, given widespread underreporting driven by stigma.
Fake profiles and anonymous accounts feature centrally in the committee’s account of how these crimes are perpetrated, enabling stalking, impersonation, sextortion, and circulation of non-consensual intimate imagery with little risk of identification.
Offenders increasingly operate using encrypted apps, VPNs, virtual numbers, and dark web infrastructure, making attribution difficult even when victims do come forward.
Existing framework
India’s IT Rules, 2021, already require significant social media intermediaries, or platforms with over 50 lakh registered users, to enable voluntary account verification using an active Indian mobile number.
The committee’s proposal would go considerably further, making verification mandatory and extending it to dating and gaming platforms not currently covered under that framework.
KYC norms, familiar from banking and telecom, typically require users to submit government-issued identity documents such as Aadhaar or PAN before accessing a service.
The idea has been circulating in Indian policy circles for some time. The National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) recommended KYC compliance for platform subscribers in a 2023 advisory on child sexual abuse material.
Internationally, Australia passed legislation in late 2024 requiring age verification on social media platforms, and the United Kingdom has moved in a similar direction under its Online Safety Act.
Both Google and Meta appeared before the committee in August 2025. Neither publicly opposed the KYC proposal, though both outlined their existing voluntary verification and content moderation mechanisms.
Meta said it responds to law enforcement data requests within 72 hours and has specialised teams working on sextortion. Google said it maintains a dedicated bulk-reporting channel for Indian law enforcement agencies.
(Edited by Sugita Katyal)
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