How Kerala Police’ CCSE under Cyberdome is fighting crimes against children
Thiruvananthapuram, Jan 17: Kerala Police CCSE (Countering Child Sexual Exploitation) Team, functioning under Cyberdome, understanding the gravity of the problem with relation to increasing online crimes against children, has for the last four years, embarked on a sustained digital analysis of the virtual trends and these problems, particularly during this Pandemic period and after identifying the culprits a special operation titled P-hunt was launched, which has been highly successful and over the last couple of years and the abstract of the raids are as follows.
The current basic trends that can be derived in the behaviour of internet users, in Kerala, is that there has been a lot of deterrent effect due to the hyper active work of the CCSE cell and due to the arrests and registration of cases. But in many cases these crimes are related to mental addictions that require treatment, and in the absence of the same, there are trends of repetition of offences or the accused coming back to the crime, more prepared, with better tools of anonymity etc. So after every two months we again see the trend going up and a spike in such cases against children, Manoj Abraham IPS Additional Director General of Police & Nodal Officer, Cyberdome said.
A
familiar
trend
is
found
in
porn
groups
operating
over
whatsapp
and
Telegram
and
number
of
such
groups
have
increased
drastically
during
this
period.
Due
to
the
police
action
thru
P
hunt
drives,
the
accused
now
watch
the
video
and
delete
it
using
specialized
software
to
evade
detection.
They
also
have
started
formatting
their
phone
every
three
days.
Use
of
malwares
to
activate
the
webcams
of
the
victim
and
to
steal
information
of
children
has
also
been
reported
in
certain
cases.
In
a
few
cases
we
have
seen
online
live
sex
sessions
involving
children
that
are
available
on
payment
over
restricted
links
As
a
part
of
the
tenth
Special
drive
of
CCSE
Cell
titled
P-Hunt
2022.1,
around
410
such
locations
were
identified
throughout
the
State
and
a
covert
operation
named
P-HUNT_
21.2,
was
planned
to
bring
the
culprits
to
book.
The
information
was
then
collated
and
passed
on
to
280
teams
under
the
District
Police
Chiefs,
having
members
of
cyber
cells,
technical
experts
and
women
component.
Under the operational supervision of the District SPs, simultaneous raids were conducted throughout the State, on Sunday the 16thof Jan 2022, from early morning onwards.
The raids were highly successful and as a part of the operation, the teams could seize 186 devices in 161 cases registered- which includeMobile phones, Modems, Hard Disks, Memory Cards, Laptops, Computers etc. with graphic and illegal videos and pictures of children. The distressing part of the same is that many of the videos/pictures appear to be of local children, ranging in age group of 5 years to 16 years.
Based on the recovery of the devices with the CSAM material, 10 arrests were made and this includes youth working in good professional jobs and most of them are IT savvy, which is the reason why they were using all kinds of encrypted handles to upload and download the material. Some are suspected to be involved in the trafficking of children also as there are many chats to this effect in their devices.
The details of rest of the people involved in circulating these images and videos are being further collected. Strong action will be taken against all the individuals involved in this racket, continuing our policy of zero tolerance in these matters. The technical assistance for the collection of information was led by Shri Shyam Kumar A, Operations Officer, Cyberdome and he was assisted by Renjith RU, Anoop GS, Vaisakh SS, Arunraj R and Akshay Santhoshall members of the CCSE Cyberdome Squad. The India Child Protection Fund (ICPF) also provided the technical expertise and resources, required to detect these online crimes and worked with the Team with a common objective of Protecting children from abuse.
It should be noted that as per the current law, viewing, distributing or storing of any child pornographic content is a criminal offense can result in, up to 5 years imprisonment and up to Rs 10 lakh fine. Kerala Police seeks the support of the community, in this project and if any member of the public comes across any such channels or groups that spread child sex-related content, we urge you to please inform Hi Tech Crime Enquiry Cell, Cyberdome or Cyber cells at the earliest, considering "Child security as the responsibility of every member of the society".