Chandigarh school AI-morphed images incident sets alarm bells ringing

Taking a serious note of the incident, the Chandigarh Parents’ Association has urged school managements not to upload students’ pictures on school portals without the consent of their legal guardians.

Senior cyber cell officials say that creating awareness about what constitutes a cybercrime, its consequences and the ramifications of online offences can help prevent such incidents. They say that parents and guardians should be aware of their children’s activities with modern gadgets. But still, the school managements should play a more proactive role in such cases, they add.

“A juvenile would never morph pictures of his family members. He would only prey on others. He has no sense of the gravity of the act, that is, he has no idea of the consequences of his act for both the victims and himself. The awareness programmes about cybersecurity have been going on in schools and colleges for a long time. We need to lay more stress on the consequences, the legal implications of committing cyber offences and how they would affect the students’ future. At the same time, parents also need to keep an eye on the activities of their children online. Extracting pictures of someone without consent is not done,” says DSP (cyber) A Venktatesh while speaking to The Indian Express.

Chandigarh Parents’ Association president Nitin Goyal, while talking to The Indian Express, says, “We accept the fact that parents should be aware of what their kids are doing with these modern gadgets. But in this particular incident, we were surprised to find the school management’s apathy in reporting the matter to local police on the very first day (on October 9) when a girl student came to know about the morphed pictures. After two days, the school management told the parents that they were free to approach the police as everything, according to the school, happened outside the campus. Ideally, the school management should have reported it to the police on the very first day. We are appealing to all the school managements not to upload students’ pictures without the consent of parents.”

In their police complaint, parents alleged that the school management did not inform them about the matter, even though the school was aware of it. They also stated that the school management counselled students in the absence of their guardians.

A case was registered at Sector 11 police station and the probe was later transferred to the Cyber Cell, which removed the manipulated pictures from the internet. The apprehended juvenile was placed in Juvenile Home, Sector 25.