Dhaka: Bangladesh has decided to enact a law awarding a maximum of ten years of imprisonment and a hefty fine for making and marketing pornographic films to curb the growing cases of video pornography, a social concern in the South Asian Muslim-majority country.
"The Cabinet today [yesterday] approved a draft law seeking to award the highest ten years of imprisonment for making and distributing pornography," Prime Minister Shaikh Hasina's press secretary Abul Kalam Azad told Gulf News.
He said the Pornography Control Act 2011 also suggested slapping of an amount of Taka 500,000 (Dh 22,098) in fine for "production, preservation, marketing, import or export of sexually explicit materials".
The draft law was approved as sexually explicit videos of two leading film actresses, made available recently in the internet, caused an uproar in the country. Moreover, the rising sale of covert pornographic videos is also a cause for concern.
Pornographic movies are freely available in some of Dhaka's shopping plazas and footpaths. They are sold under three categories — X, two X and three X films. The three Xs are hard-core pornography, two Xs are soft-porn, while the single X are erotic films with occasional scenes of nudity.
In past few years, many people were convicted for making home-made pornographic videos by using digital cameras and then selling copies of the them on the black market.
