India Investigation Bureau uncovers child pornography racket with ties to Sri Lanka

COLOMBO (News 1st); The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) of India has uncovered an operation in connection with online sexual abuse of minors, which had several Sri Lankans offenders as well. The operation was uncovered after the CBI conducted searches across 14 States and Union Territories in connection with 23 cases previously registered against 83 persons who were allegedly part of various syndicates involved in sharing links, videos, pictures, texts, posts related to child abuse and child pornographic material across social media and were accused of hosting such material on third party storage platforms. Moreover, the investigations by the CBI have revealed that several accused were being paid for sharing the videos and images on pay-per-view basis. The CBI is currently following the money trail to establish the identities of other suspects. According to the CBI, it has so far gathered information about more than 50 groups comprising over 5,000 offenders, whilst it was initially learnt that there may be involvement of nationals of about 100 countries spread across various continents. The CBI said those involved in the sharing of child pornography include 36 people from Pakistan, 35 from Canada, 35 from America, 31 from Bangladesh, 30 from Sri Lanka, 28 from Nigeria, 27 from Azerbaijan, 24 from Yemen and 22 from Malaysia. Given the serious nature of the offence, the CBI is exploring the possibility of taking up the matter with social media websites and hosting platforms to examine their role and liability. It also plans to approach the International Child Sexual Exploitation Database to trace the origin of the child sexual abuse images seized during the operations.

(Courtesy: The Hindu)