‘US, Pakistan residents in child porn racket’

NEW DELHI: The CBI has identified around 35 persons from the US, 22 from Malaysia and 35 others from countries like Canada and Pakistan for their alleged involvement in a global racket of circulation of material pertaining to child sexual abuse, sources said. The agency plans to take up the matter with social media websites and hosting platforms — widely used in this case to circulate the explicit materials — and examine their role and liability, an official said.


Earlier, the agency had made arrests in the case following registration of 23 FIRs on November 14 and country-wide raids on Tuesday. The arrested men claimed that the obscene content was uploaded by them on certain websites and the URLs were then shared in chat groups. The hosts received payments on the basis of the number of views on the materials.

Initial probe suggested that there are over 50 groups with over 5,000 offenders where child sexual abuse material are shared. These include foreign nationals from nearly 100 countries. The CBI has also zeroed in on around 31 suspects from Bangladesh, 28 from Nigeria, 30 from Sri Lanka, 27 from Azerbaijan and 24 from Yemen, said sources.

“The CBI plans to coordinate with various foreign law enforcement agencies for further action...,” an agency spokesperson said.

Investigators had earlier confirmed that some individuals were involved in trading child abuse material for monetary benefits. During searches of electronic gadgets like mobiles and laptops, it was revealed that several people were commercially disseminating explicit material by sharing links, videos, pictures, texts, posts and hosting such content on social media and third-party platforms, an official said. “Money trail is being followed to work out the linkages of the offenders,” said the source.

The agency also plans to coordinate with the International Child Sexual Exploitation Database for comparing the child sexual abuse images and trace their origin. As per the Interpol, an estimated 2.4 million instances of online child sexual abuse were reported from India from 2017 to 2020, CBI sources said.

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