CBI books 7 for being part of international child porn racket

New Delhi: Six-thousand kilometres away, the German Police had arrested one Sasche Treppke earlier this year for running a child pornography racket, where he was found guilty of sexually abusing children, recording the explicit acts and distributing the material across the globe through channels like WhatsApp groups.

The Central Bureau of Investigation has now registered a case against seven Indians for being part of several of these chat groups run by Treppke where child pornography was being circulated on a large scale. The CBI, from where the International Police Cooperation Cell (IPCC) operates, had received inputs from the German Police, through the German Embassy here that seven active Indian phone numbers were part of the WhatsApp groups run by Treppke.

Based on these inputs, the CBI had initiated a preliminary enquiry in the case, which has now been converted into an FIR. According to the central probe agency's findings so far, it has been established that the users of these seven phone numbers were involved in the chat groups transmitting material depicting children in sexually explicit acts via electronic form. According to details in the CBI' FIR, the Indians found to be part of the groups include Vinoth Kannan (Chennai), Zuhaib Ali (Delhi), Khozema H (Chennai), Rakesh Kumar (Faridabad), Abhishek Kumar Tripathi (Ghaziabad), Joydeep Roy (Howrah) and Rahees (Jaipur). According to the investigation led by German Police in Lubek, searches at premises related to Treppke resulted in the discovery of several data carriers containing pictures and videos pertaining to child pornography.

Police in Lubek discovered that Treppke was part of at least 29 WhatsApp chat groups where such material was being shared with a total of 483 members located in different countries across the globe.

As per the probe conducted so far, it has been found that Kannan and Zuhaib Ali were each part of three chat groups run by Treppke, while the other Indian members were part of one group each. While Treppke has been sentenced by a German court to five years in prisone for his crimes, the CBI will now look into the level of involvement of the accused Indians in the international child pornography racket.