In a major crack down, Indore police on Wednesday busted a racket of child pornography spread in 28 countries. Three people who were allegedly running a paid WhatsApp group were arrested.
Makrand Salunke, 24, an electronic engineer working in a multinational automobile company in Pithampur, Omkar Singh Rathore, 43, a kitchen appliances shopkeeper and a minor boy of class 12 were arrested under section 67B of IT Act by the cyber cell of Indore police.
The WhatsApp group had a total of 454 members with maximum people from India and Pakistan. While 205 members were from Indian origin, 177 belonged to Pakistan. Apart from this, members from the United States, Kuwait, Kenya, Nepal, Malaysia, Spain, China, Thailand, Mexico, Argentina and some other countries used to regularly trade child-pornographic material.
According to Cyber Cell Superintendent of Police Jitendra Singh, the administrator of the group was using a mobile number of Kuwait while the membership was through a WhatsApp link. He said further investigations are on and that the mobile phones of the accused have been confiscated for forensic examination. Police said that they are also examining whether there are are more such groups.
In February this year, a similar group, the first of its kind in India, was nabbed in Kanauj in Uttar Pradesh. The Kannauj group had membership from nearly forty countries while maximum were from India.
The section 67B of Information Technology (IT) Act deals with “depicting children engaged in sexually explicit act, creating text or digital images or advertising or promoting such material depicting children in obscene or indecent manner etc or facilitating abusing children online or inducing children to online relationship with one or more children etc come under this Section.’’
Under this section, punishment for the first conviction is imprisonment for a maximum of five years and a fine of Rs 10 lakh and in the event of subsequent conviction the culprit will have to face imprisonment of seven years and a fine of Rs 10 lakh.