THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: In 2017, a child pornography case was reported in Thiruvananthapuram district. The next year, it increased to three and so far this year, the number has become five. “We are unable to say if the number of paedophiles has increased but we were able to arrest the culprits involved in the cases, as we strengthened our investigation,” said Manoj Abraham, ADGP and nodal officer of Cyberdome, who led Operation P-Hunt.
People engaged in distributing child pornography on the internet are under surveillance, as part of the operation. A group of people who regularly viewed child pornography and circulated them among friends were caught from Kazhakoottam a few months ago.
“Those who are involved in watching pornography think they cannot be traced. They assume cyberspace is a private world, like their four walls. This wrong perception brings out the animal in them,” said Balram Kumar Upadhyay, City Police Commissioner.
Manoj echoed the same and said: “They don’t realise that if there are software to maintain anonymity, there are also ones to reveal identities.”
According to him, with the increase in sources, the supply and demand of child pornography have also risen. Sharing a few incidents of pedophile cases in Operation P-Hunt, he said: “There was an instance of a grandfather who shot his grandchildren for a video. In some cases, working parents assigned their children to a neighbour’s house, who then took the children’s pictures and videos and circulated them.”
According to experts, those involved in paedophilia present themselves as polished people. “One finds it difficult to believe that they’re culprits. Therefore, parents tend to trust their children with them,” said Manoj.
“Children exposed to pornography or sexual abuse below the age of 12 are easily preyed on by paedophiles, as their critical thinking gets affected,” said Dr Arun B Nair, a psychiatrist at Medical College Hospital, Thiruvananthapuram.
According to the psychiatrist, those involved in drug abuse tend to incline towards such activities. “The prefrontal cortex of the brain, which acts as the self-controlling centre, tends to become depressed or numb among drug users,” he said. Lack of empathy grows among such people when they identify platforms to form communities. “Identifying the problem at an early stage of adolescence can reduce the social harm caused by a paedophile,” he said.