CHENNAI: IN a shocking case, the city police on Tuesday arrested a couple, believed to have made a whopping Rs 2.4 crore in five years by running a child pornography website.
The couple - Siddhattha Velu and Priscilla Margaret Dhanaraj - were operating the website from a rented house at Sholinganallur and collected huge amount for membership from viewers across globe.
On a tip-off about child pornography content being hosted on the website, the Cyber Crime Cell of CBCID on Tuesday traced and arrested the couple. The bank transaction details revealed that the couple had collected nearly Rs 2.4 crore through membership.
Police sources said, Siddhattha Velu, a native of Trichy was married to Priscilla from Vellore five years ago. The couple shifted to Chennai and had rented a house in Sholinganallur.
During investigations it was revealed that Siddhatta, a school drop out, was well versed in networking and website hosting. He along with his wife were hosting two websites in which they posted obscene images of videos of children and adults that they had taken from other porn websites. Interestingly, they had also displayed their email ids in the websites for viewers to contact them and to avail membership. Viewers and members were mainly from USA, UK and Canada.
"They had opened a bank account in a private bank in the same locality through which the members would transfer the money in small amounts to avoid suspicion by the banker. The couple would not socialise much so the residents were not aware of their activities," said the police source.
Inquires revealed that the Rs 2.4 crore that was collected through membership fees for one of the website was credited to Siddhattha Velu. After a case was registered under the provisions of Information Technology Act, searches were conducted at the residence of the couple and it was found that the duo was posting the same images in three other child pornography websites.
The couple was arrested and produced before the competent court.