By Peter Berton

INDORE, India – In the wake of several high-profile, violent rapes of women and children, anti-porn activists in India are calling for the arrest and imprisonment of Indo-Canadian porn star and Bollywood sweetheart Sunny Leone on the grounds she’s corrupting society’s morals.

“The 31-year-old became one of the most searched names on the internet in India when she arrived in 2011 to appear in a reality TV series and has since taken several raunchy roles in mainstream movies,” the AFP news agency reported. “As India casts around for reasons to explain a series of horrifying sex crimes, the latest being the kidnap and brutal rape of a five-year-old girl, pornography is under scrutiny and has led some to call for Leone to be jailed.”

Indian politicians have a bully pulpit for the public debate. Instead of blaming prevailing social attitudes and maladjusted individuals for the recent outbreak of sexual assaults, some insist the crimes will “go away” if porn is banned.

“Lawyer Kamlesh Vaswani — based in the central Indian city of Indore — wants watching pornography to be made a non-bailable offense because he feels there is a direct connection between sexual assault and looking at pornographic videos,” Voice of America reported.

Distributing porn is illegal in India, but watching it currently is not. Vaswani has petitioned the country’s Supreme Court to rule on whether watching porn violates the law. In turn, the court has asked the Indian government to respond to Vaswani’s petition.

“They [pornographers] corrupt the people. They corrupt the mind,” Vaswani said. “Indian kids are accessing more graphic and brutal videos.”