People who think that the recent child rape cases in Pakistan have nothing to do with the Dark Web are most probably living under a rock and are oblivious to the complexity of the Internet and the recently busted dark-web-child-porn-rings in countries like USA, UK, Norway, Sweden, Australia, and the Philippines. Even a layman can see obvious similarities between the horrific cases of children that surfaced in the last six months in Kasur, Sargodha, Jaranwala and recently Karachi. Not only such cases came in the limelight but few culprits involved in child pornography were also caught in Pakistan after international agencies gave information to our authorities.

Before moving on to some significant evidence of an active child pornography ring in Pakistan let us first recognise the existence of Dark Web about which people are still confused. The Internet is basically the service that connects computers around the globe. An application on the internet is World Wide Web that we commonly use to access our everyday websites. So Internet acts as a platform with several inter-connected networks both private and public and hosting several applications. Now the private networks on the World Wide Web which are not accessible through your conventional search engines make up the Deep Web. These websites are only accessible through browsers such as Tor and search engines such as DuckDuckgo that let you visit these sites through somewhat anonymous means. The Deep Web came into the limelight after a website called Silk Road was identified selling illegal drugs. Thus emerged the terminology of Dark Web, the network comprised of websites involved in illegal activities such as selling drugs, child pornography, commercial assassins, forbidden documents etc.

Child's Play, Play Pen, Red Room and Hurt 2 core are some of the busted violent pornographic websites that operated on the Dark Web. These websites are known to showcase thousands of child rape and torture videos on daily basis majority of which were from poverty-stricken countries. Authorities are rigorously on the lookout for such websites through policemen disguised as child abusers and hacking into these sites. A major Dark Web scandal emerged after the FBI busted a paedophilic ring by hacking a website known as Playpen on the Dark Web. The strategic plan to bust a child pornographic website involved luring culprits to the site, sending malware to their computers and finally accessing their location. This plan resulted in an arrest of hundreds of people involved in child pornography. This being said one does not need FBI skills to analyse that the Dark Web is full of pornographic material and it is also evident that the material must be relatively higher in vulgarity in order to make an effort to keep it in the Dark Web. There are websites and forums dedicated to images and videos depicting rape, murder, sadism, torture, pedophilia, blackmail, humiliation and degradation. A simple Dark Web child abuse scandal search on Google reveals numerous cases reported in the developing countries.

A recent surge in the child abuse cases in Pakistan involved children being abducted and later on found dead. The autopsies revealed similar mutilation of their bodies with burns, bites, rape, torture, and death by strangling. Is it so hard to see the facts that the kids were being raped, tortured and killed in a similar manner? Not only this but the video scandal of Kasur revealed hundreds of videos being sold in the local market. Are our authorities that dumb to realise that such videos must never make it to the Internet in the first place? Moreover, a culprit such as Saadat Amin was arrested in Sargodha after being identified by Norwegian police. He was involved in the biggest paedophilic scandal in Norway resulting in capturing 150 tera-bytes of child pornographic data involving children as young as babies.

The law enforcing institutions should know that general public like me cannot have direct access to these websites for collecting graphic evidence since such websites normally require registration through payment in the form of bitcoins or by first uploading videos of you committing child abuse. Therefore requiring evidence from people who are coming forward with information regarding the existence of a global violent child pornography rings on the Dark Web is insane. Authorities need to do their own homework and crack down on this ring working in Pakistan before it engulfs more children.

No problem in the world exists without a solution. The dilemma with our nation is that we are handed over the technology without being educated about its repercussions. The question is not to be asked from Dr Shahid Masood or Mr Orya Maqbool regarding having evidence of Dark Web. The questions are to be asked from the authorities, from law enforcing agencies, from our courts. How can they not see the violent child pornography on the rise? And what counter-actions have been taken since the Kasur scandal emerged? Has access to Dark Web been censored? Has the intelligence planned out a strategic solution to trap and catch child molesters? The question should be asked from our educated masses. From our IT experts. What are we doing to ensure the safety of our children? How hard is it to keep a lookout in your neighborhood? How hard can it be for our hackers to track down child pornographic images and videos being uploaded and downloaded from Pakistan?

It is time that our intelligence agencies use help from IT experts of our country and track down the paedophilic ring committing hideous crimes. Instead of playing blame game it is need of the hour to strategically handle these cases and involve the top intelligence. It is certainly not a difficult task. If our authorities can track down bloggers and blasphemers on the Internet they certainly have the capacity to track down people who are uploading or downloading child pornographic material. If videos are being made they are also being uploaded somewhere. If kids of similar age-group are being abducted, tortured, raped and killed in the same manner it can no longer be regarded as a coincidence.

Sensor access to the deep web like China, Iran, Bahrain and Saudi Arabia. Since our public is yet not civilised to understand the use of surface web we certainly do not need the Deep Web.

Go undercover. Since accessing location on Deep Web is complex police need to utilise detective skills of disguising as one of the child abusers and track child molesters through social engineering (the use of deception to manipulate individuals into divulging confidential or personal information).

Government and agencies need to take an action on expedite basis if obviously they still have a heart beating inside their chest.

May Allah keep our children safe and guide us to be better caretakers of our future generation.