Two arrested in Delhi for sale of child pornography material

Two Delhi-based men, including an engineering graduate, were arrested on charges of selling and purchasing Child Sexual abuse Material (CSAM) through social media platforms, the CBI said on Sunday.

The arrested have been identified as Neeraj Kumar Yadav, an engineer, and Kuljeet Singh Makan. They were taken into custody by a special unit of the CBI that handles child abuse crimes.

Sources said Yadav was indulging in these activities since 2019 and gained monetary benefits out of it.

The latest action came on a case registered on claims that advertisement of objectionable material, including child pornographic material, was posted on Instagram for sale.

"It was further alleged that the said accused had purchased a large volume of data, from another accused person, which was stored over cloud-based websites containing objectionable material including the CSAM and made payment to him through Pay-TM for the same. Thereafter, the accused allegedly published an advertisement for sale of said material over Instagram," a CBI statement said.

"On receipt of payments via Paytm, Google Pay etc. from the customer(s)/seekers, the accused was allegedly sharing the said objectionable material with them through WhatsApp, Telegram, Instagram and other social media platforms," it said.

The duo has been remanded to judicial custody till January 22.

The CBI had recently arrested a resident of Chitrakoot in Uttar Pradesh on November 16 on the allegations of sexually abusing over 50 children. During searches, huge material including mobile phones, laptops, web-camera, electronic storage devices, pen drives/ memory cards, several sex toys, emails etc. were recovered.

On December 22, the CBI had arrested a Kashmiri resident for allegedly circulating child abuse material on the internet and targeting minors in the United States through his wife staying in Washington.

The accused's wife is living in Washington and he was operating the racket through her. The woman had "agreed to be involved in the master-slave relationship with the accused and on his direction, allegedly exploited multiple minors, recorded abuses and electronically sent the same to him", the CBI had claimed.

The CBI is also regularly coordinating with international law enforcement agencies to detect and investigate sexual abuse of minors, especially over cyberspace, and also reaffirms its commitment towards promoting cooperation with US Law Enforcement Agencies in combating child sexual abuse in cyberspace.