WhatsApp Group Admin Arrested for Circulating Child Porn

The members of the group included those from the US, China, New Zealand, Brazil and Sri Lanka.

Image used for representational purposes.

(Photo Courtesy: The News Minute)

The Central Bureau of Investigation, on 22 February, registered a case against five admins and 119 members of a WhatsApp group for uploading and circulating child pornography videos.

The CBI said the WhatsApp group by the name ‘KidsXXX’ had five administrators, out of whom the main admin, Nikhil Verma, has been arrested from Kannauj, a small town in Uttar Pradesh.

Tagging the case as a “global crime,” the CBI said the WhatsApp group members hail from various countries, including US, Pakistan, China and Brazil, and are being probed.

During search, it was found that the group consisted of more than 100 members from India, and also from around 18 countries.

CBI spokesperson Abhishek Dayal

The CBI has filed a case against the accused under Section 67-B of the Information Technology Act.

The probe agency has also searched the premises of Verma and the other four administrators – Satyendra Chauhan, Nafees Raja, Zahid and Adarsh – in Delhi, Uttar Pradesh, and Maharashtra.

Computers, hard disks, phones, videos and photographs of children being sexually abused were recovered during the raids.

The agency said it is probing all angles, including the possibility of a well-connected network of recording and selling the child sexual abuse videos on the internet. The CBI said it will also connect to the investigators in US, Pakistan, Brazil, Afghanistan, Sri Lanka, Kenya, Nigeria, Mexico and New Zealand.

The CBI said the WhatsApp group ‘KidsXXX’ was running for the past two years. The agency added that the minor victims appearing in the videos and photos are still unidentified.

The agency, which acted on its own intelligence, toiled for nearly three months, without using any WhatsApp surveillance, to track down the accused merely on the basis of field work of obtaining corroborating evidence, they said.

(With inputs from PTI)

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