THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: The Kerala Police have registered 161 cases and arrested 10 people who allegedly uploaded and circulated child sexual abuse material in cyberspace. The arrests were made after the police's Countering Child Sexual Exploitation (CCSE) team conducted statewide raids on Sunday.
The raids were part of Operation P-Hunt, which is meant to bust rackets and individuals involved in circulation and sharing of child abuse content.
ADGP Manoj Abraham, who is the nodal officer of the Cyberdome that monitors P-Hunt, said about 410 locations were identified and the information was passed on to 280 teams that operated under the district police chiefs.
During the raids, 186 devices were seized and 161 cases were registered across the state, Manoj added.
During the raids, gadgets including mobile phones, modems, hard disks, memory cards, laptops and computers were seized. The gadgets contained graphic abuse videos of children. Some of the content appeared to be that of local children between the age of five and 16.
Manoj said the arrested suspects included IT professionals and youth having white collar jobs. Most of them were tech savvy and hence used encrypting softwars to upload and download abuse content from the dark web.
The sustained police action acted as a deterrence for the offenders for a short period, but most of them repeat the crime using better tools that give them anonymity. The police said the suspects now watch the video and delete it immediately using special software that aids them to avoid detection. They also format their phones every three days making it difficult for the law enforcement agencies to track them.
In some cases, it was noticed that the offenders used malware to activate the webcams of the victims. Compounding the woes of the agencies, some offenders used online live sex sessions involving children that could be attended by users over restricted links available on payment.
The police since 2017 have conducted 2280 raids and registered 1235 cases under Operation P-Hunt. As many as 1693 devices were seized and 258 people have been so far arrested under the special drive.