Online child sexual abuse: Raids conducted in 10 districts of Uttar Pradesh

LUCKNOW: The Central Bureau of Investigation conducted searches in 10 UP districts on Tuesday in connection with an online child abuse and exploitation case. The searches were also conducted in 77 locations across the country.


Early on Tuesday, CBI teams swooped down in

Mau

, Chandauli, Varanasi, Ghazipur, Siddharthnagar, Moradabad, Noida, Jhansi, Ghaziabad and

Muzaffarnagar

. CBI sleuths recovered several electronic gadgets, including mobile phones and laptops. Traces of child sexual exploitation material (CSEM) were also recovered.

Sources said names of six persons from UP, Shubham Pratap Gautam of Varanasi, Touheed Aalam of Ghazipur, Shabuddin of Siddharthnagar, Sooraj Kumar of Mughalsarai, Himanshu Kumar of Mau, Rahul of Jalaun, had cropped up in probe. They had exchanged CSEM on WhatsApp and traded it further in 12 countries. They were booked under charges of punishment for publishing or transmitting material depicting children in sexually explicit act in electronic form and criminal conspiracy.

The sources also said the accused and several unidentified persons were involved in disseminating the CSEM by sharing links, videos, pictures, texts, posts and hosting such content on social media groups/platforms (especially through WhatsApp groups named (Only Child Sex Videos) and third-party storage and hosting platforms.