Sexual abuse of children: Chargesheet filed against accused

Banda (UP), February 12

The CBI on Friday filed a charge sheet against a junior engineer and his wife arrested for allegedly exploiting children sexually and selling videos of the act to paedophiles across the globe on darknet.

The CBI filed the charge sheet against suspended Irrigation Department’s Junior Engineer Ram Bhavan and his wife Durgawati in the court of Additional District and Sessions Judge Mohammand Rizwan Ahmad, Assistant Government Counsel Manoj Dixit said.

The charge sheet was filed in a steel box, and it could have more than 2,500 pages, he said. 

The CBI produced one more accused, aged about 36, arrested from Gita Colony in Delhi and sought his remand from the court, he said.

Dixit said the court has fixed February 15 as the next date of hearing during which all three accused will be present in the court.

CBI Circle Officer Amit Kumar had got statements of 25 children recorded till January 25 and their medical tests were also done by a team of AIIMS doctors.            

Ram Bhavan was arrested on November 16 last year following which he was suspended. His wife Durgawati was arrested on December 28.

The arrests were made by a dedicated unit of the CBI specialising in the probe into cases of online sexual abuse and exploitation of children.

The arrested junior engineer, a resident of Chitrakoot district, is alleged to have victimised about 50 children in the age group of five to 16 years in Chitrakoot, Banda and Hamirpur districts.

During searches, the CBI had recovered eight mobile phones, around Rs 8 lakh in cash, sex toys, laptops and other digital evidence carrying a huge amount of child sexual abuse material, agency officials had said earlier.

The junior engineer had allegedly been indulging in the crime for the past 10 years, mainly contacting and sharing the sexual abuse material with other paedophiles globally using the darknet and cloud services abroad, they said.

He is also alleged to have told investigators that he used to bribe children with mobile phones and other electronic gadgets to keep their mouth shut about his activities. — PTI

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