As part of its crackdown on child pornography, the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), during its initial investigation, has found involvement of more than 50 groups, having more than 5,000 offenders sharing child sexual abuse material, which involves foreign nationals and mobile numbers of around 100 nationalities.
Sources in the CBI said that the investigative agency also plans to take up the matter with social media websites and hosting platforms under the relevant legal provisions to examine their role and liability.
As part of the crackdown, the probe agency had on Tuesday carried out coordinated raids at 77 locations in 14 states and detained 10 accused for allegedly posting and circulating the illicit content on the Internet. The raids were carried out in Andhra Pradesh, Delhi, Uttar Pradesh, Punjab, Bihar, Odisha, Tamil Nadu, Rajasthan, Maharashtra, Gujarat, Haryana, Chhattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh, and Himachal Pradesh.
It registered 23 cases against 83 people involved in the sexual abuse of children. They are accused of posting and circulating abuse material on the web space.
Sources in the CBI told CNN-News18 these 50 groups with more than 5,000 offenders sharing child sexual abuse material includes those in Pakistan (36), Canada (35), USA (35), Bangladesh (31), Sri Lanka (30), Nigeria (28), Azerbaijan (27), Yemen (24) and Malaysia (22).
An estimated 2.4 million instances of online child sexual abuse were reported from India from 2017 to 2020 and 80 per cent of these children were girls under the age of 14, CBI sources said, based on the information received via the Interpol.
The information, available exclusively with CNN-News18, shows that the content and consumers of child pornography are growing at a sharp rate. One finding shows that search engines get over 1,16,000 queries related to child pornography every day.
Sources said that the CBI plans to coordinate with various foreign law enforcement agencies for taking further action related to foreign nationals and also about the origin of the CSEM material. The CBI is coordinating with sister agencies through formal and informal channels.
During initial investigation, it was observed that some individuals were involved in trading of CSEM material for monetary benefits. During searches of electronic gadgets/mobiles/laptops etc. at many locations, it was revealed that persons were disseminating CSEM by way of sharing links, videos, pictures, texts, posts and hosting of such content on social media groups/platforms and third-party storage/hosting platforms and earning regular income in their bank accounts linked to such online platforms.
Money trail is now being followed to work out the backward and forward linkages of the offenders.
The CBI also plans to take up the matter with social media websites and hosting platforms under the relevant legal provisions to examine their role and liability.
One disturbing trend noticed by the CBI during this operation is that several persons have made trading/selling of the CSEM material and are sharing links in various groups/platforms.
Such persons have their wallets/bank accounts linked to such platforms and are being paid on the basis of the views collected by the material shared by them thus encouraging them to share in more and more such groups leading to large scale dissemination.
It also plans to coordinate with International Child Sexual Exploitation Database for comparing the child sexual abuse images in order to trace the origin of the same.
Keeping in view the involvement of a large number of foreign nationals and collective international concern against large scale dissemination of CSEM material, the investigative agency plans to coordinate with various foreign law enforcenent agencies for taking further action related to foreign nationals and also about origin of the CSEM material. It is coordinating with sister agencies through formal and informal channels.
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