THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: The Counter Child Sexual Exploitation (CCSE) unit of the state police has prepared a list of 6,146 offenders suspected of being involved in viewing child sexual abuse materials (CSAM).
The unit began preparing the list following its formation in 2017.
Cases have been registered against 1,758 people on obtaining evidence from examining their digital gadgets. The unit has also seized more than 3,000 electronic devices from suspects and about 400 people have been arrested till date, sources said.
The CCSE unit adds around 400 people to its suspect list every three months, sources said. Further details of these suspects are collected following which raids are conducted with the help of district police chiefs.
The unit, which operates under the cyber division, collects information using its own software and other open-source tools. It also receives information from the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB), which has access to the tipline reports available with the National Centre for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC), USA.
Sources said offenders often resort to erasing the data from their phones using special software and also change devices, which hampers evidence collection and weakens the case against them.
Despite good work, final legal outcome of most cases bleak
“We have come across many such instances where data has been deleted from devices. In some cases, the agencies provide us the information on the basis of the two-month-old online activity of the offenders. By the time we reach the offenders, they might’ve changed the devices or deleted the data by formatting the device,” said an official.
Sustained policing against viewers of CSAM has a strong deterrence value as it sends a strong message to the public, sources said.
“We have found that people who were apprehended once don’t commit the offence again. We do not have habitual offenders in the case of CSAM. Those who landed in the legal dragnet are afraid of repeating the offence. It’s new people who are being added to the suspect list,” an officer added.
Despite all the good work of the CCSE sleuths, the final legal outcome of most cases, however, is bleak. The reason is that it is near-impossible to prove the age of the victims depicted in the CSAM, which could raise questions on the validity of the Pocso Act charges invoked against the accused.
As per law, to prove that the victims are minors, police are required to produce their birth certificates, school certificates or medical reports. Since officers cannot produce any of those documents in cases where the CSAM was generated from outside the country, it’s unlikely that the Pocso Act sections would stand. However, the silver lining is that IT Act section 67B was found standing in many cases, based on which there have been several convictions.
“We’ve got about 15 convictions so far. Most of the cases are still in the pre-trial stage and we hope the accused will receive deserving punishment,” a senior officer said.