CHENNAI: The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) has charge-sheeted a doctoral student for online child sexual abuse and exploitation.
The 35-year-old, hailing from Thanjavur is pursuing his Ph.D course.
The chargesheet was filed in a trial court at Thanjavur. CBI in a statement said that investigations revealed that the accused sexually assaulted eight children, both male and female between the age group of 5-18 for a couple of years.
It was further alleged that the accused forced victims to perform sexual acts on them as well on other minor children, including a minor victim girl; clicked photographs and recorded video; forced them to watch sexual acts with other adult persons; threatened them with publishing the pictures/video on social media and for bringing more minor girls. He also sexually abused them and created child sexual abuse material, where most of the minor victims were still less than 12 years of age.
A case was registered against the accused and other unknown persons on the allegations of creating, collecting, seeking, browsing, downloading and exchanging/distributing material depicting children in sexually explicit acts in electronic form. It was alleged that the accused has been sexually abusing a child for last four years, a CBI release stated.
CBI found child sexual abuse material images and videos from Interpol's Child Sexual Exploitation (ICSE) database. The analysis of the images using cyber forensic tools, the location of the incident was traced to Thanjavur District in Tamil Nadu. Analysis of videos revealed that a few victims were allegedly being sexually abused by male persons, the release added.