CBI busts global child porn racket; 20-yr-old arrested

New Delhi: The CBI on Thursday claimed to have busted an international child abuse pornography racket operating on a WhatsApp group and arrested its alleged administrator — an unemployed youth from Kannauj in Uttar Pradesh.

According to sources after registering a case of alleged violation of Information Technology Act, CBI sleuths carried out searches at five locations in Delhi, Mumbai and Noida and Kannauj in Uttar Pradesh.

Nikhil Verma, who is pursuing his graduation in commerce and is currently unemployed, was arrested by the CBI. During investigation, the agency has been able to find that there are 119 members of the group—’KidsXXX’—who were getting these disturbing pictures and videos to satiate their perverted lust, they said.

The members of the group spread globally, including the US, China, New Zealand, Mexico, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Brazil, Kenya, Nigeria and Sri Lanka, among others, sources said.

During searches, the CBI recovered mobile phones, laptops, and hard discs and other digital devices, they said. Verma was booked along with four others accomplices—Nafees Reza and Zahid of Delhi, Satyendra Om Prakash Chauhan of Mumbai and Adarsh of Noida. 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 added. According to sources, it was a classic police investigation where sleuths travelled to localities from where IP addresses of the computers and mobile phones used to upload and circulate child pornography videos, a heinous offence under the law.

The agency is trying to locate other members and the group present in India and abroad, they said.