HYDERABAD: James Kirk Jones, a US citizen living in Hyderabad was arrested for downloading and uploading child sexual abuse materials (CSAM) or child pornography in January this year. He was, at the time, working with an MNC law firm.
The Hyderabad Police recovered a laptop containing 29,288 items of CSAM, 490 GigaTribe (a file-sharing site) profiles and 24 Twitter profiles from which he allegedly shared such materials. Apart from this, an external hard drive and an iPhone with adult pornography on it were also recovered. The 42-year-old confessed that he has been watching CSAM since childhood and was sharing the material from Hyderabad with 497 persons.
A case was registered under Sections of 67A and 67B of the Information Technology Act, 2000. He was the first in India to be put behind bars under the Act. He was trapped under an operation by Interpol officials who noticed that there was CSAM being circulated from Jones’ Twitter account. They posed as child porn enthusiasts and requested for a huge collection through which his IP details were traced and he was picked up.
There was no proof of Jones indulging in any real-time child sexual abuse who came to India five years ago. According to officials, he was discreet back home but he started freely purchasing, downloading and sharing child porn.