NEW DELHI: The CBI has claimed to have recovered huge amount of porn material from one of the seven Indian accused booked by the agency for being part of international WhatsApp groups circulating child sexual abuse content, a probe triggered by a tip-off from German investigators which had arrested a group member in that country.
After registration of an FIR in September last week, the CBI had carried out searches at the residence of all the seven accused whose numbers were shared by the German authorities with the International Police Cooperation Cell of the agency, officials said.
During the searches, the agency has recovered 11 mobile phones, two hard discs, 11 SIM cards, 2 memory cards and two pen drives which will be sent to electronic forensic evaluation, they said.
The agency also claimed to have recovered a lot of porn material from one of the accused based in Chennai.
German investigators had arrested one Sasche Treppke in Lubeck for involvement in sexual abuse of children and distribution of related material between November 24, 2015 and July 8, 2016, they said.
He was sentenced to five years imprisonment by the court in Germany, they said.
The German investigators had carried out searches at the premises of Treppke in Germany which revealed that he was a member of 29 international WhatsApp groups on which child sexual abuse material was being shared between November 24, 2015, and July 8, 2016, they said.
The groups which had in total 483 participants had seven Indian phone numbers as well which Germany shared with the CBI, the officials said.
The agency conducted a preliminary enquiry during which it identified people from ID proofs submitted by them in the customer application forms to get those numbers, they said.