The arrests which took place on Friday, was based on an anonymous tip from a friend of one of the students who bought the videos.
In yet another crackdown on the distribution of child sexual abuse material (otherwise known as child porn), the Tamil Nadu police on Friday arrested the owner and an employee of a mobile shop in Ramanathapuram. The duo were selling pornographic and child sexual abuse material to adults and school going children in the area.
The arrests which took place on Friday, was based on an anonymous tip off that the district police received two weeks. According to district Superintendent of Police Varun Kumar, the person who called was a distressed student, who was concerned about his friends.
“He has called and informed us that this particular shop in Kamutha, near the bus stop was selling pornographic content. He said his friends were watching it and their minds were getting corrupted. We observed and monitored the situation for some time before carrying out a raid,” he says.
After the police seized the material, they found that he had several videos which contained child sexual abuse material. They were all in a folder called ‘School’ and it contains 11 titles with material depicting minors in a sexual manner.
“Basically he downloads this material from the internet and stores it in his computer. Then he sells it to these children and fixes the rate according to the size of the file. The shop has been there for two years but we are still investigating how long this illegal activity has been underway,” says the SP. “The children were downloading it in pendrives, their phones and hard discs,” he adds.
The district police has already sent out an advisory warning those indulging in such activities of severe action and a minimum imprisonment of three years.
The accused in this case, K Pon Irul (41) the owner and his employee M Vazhi (31) have been booked under sections 292(2)(b) in Indian Penal Code, Section 15 of the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act (punishment for storage of pornographic material involving child) and sections 67 (Transmitting obscene material in electronic form), 67B (a), 67B (b) and 67B (c) of the Information Technology Act, 2000 of the Indian Penal Code.
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Source: The News Minute