14 December 2000

INDIAN CAUGHT FOR CHILD PORNO WEBSITE

From Jal Khambata

NEW DELHI: An electronic engineer of Secunderabad in Andhra Pradesh has slurred the fame India has earned for providing the world the best computer brains as the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) has nabbed him for using his computer expertise to spread worldwide the network of sexual abuse of children in what was a major cyber crime going on in dozens of countries with the help of internet that is free from their geographical boundaries.

His operations were conducted in the United States and the western countries and as such he was quite confident that the law enforcement agencies will never be able to trace him for the racket he was running over the internet from his cosy home in India for the sale of child pornography video cassettes, compact disks (CDs) and photographs as no transactions took place in India.

His arrest and the revelations that he has made reminds one of a scandal of sexual abuse of children unearthed in Goa two years ago and in the instant case the alleged sexual abuse of children was going on unnoticed not in Andhra Pradesh or anywhere in India but right in the United States which has the most strict laws against such crimes.

Raid on an Italian joint selling the pornographic material, however, proved to be his nemesis as the CBI caught him recently following a worldwide hunt launched by the Interpol, the agency comprising the police of various countries coordinating for investigations and arrest of the criminal culprits.

Arvind Janardhan, who administered the pornographic website www.arjica.com, has an excuse that he had not uploaded any pornographic material on the website. He has claimed during the CBI investigations that all that he had provided on his website was a free access to anybody and everybody to make use of the internet to spread the word about whatever they want. He is reported to have, in fact, shown how he had removed from his website the objectionable material like pornographical stuff from his website from time to time and pleaded that it was, however, not possible for him to keep track of all the activities that go on the website every minute as no individual can cope up with the speed with which the internet uploads and downloads go on.

All these excuses have, however, not saved Arvind's skin as he is the man who had registered the website and who is the administrator responsible for whatever is displayed on his website as is the case with the publisher and editor who are held responsible for everything that is printed in a newspaper.

Arvind was clever enough to upload his website on a computer in Lima, the capital of Peru in Latin America, where even the ordinary laws are lax and the cyber laws totally non-existent. The website was thrown open for free uploads by anybody, provided a small percentage of the income from the advertisements appearing in such material is paid to the administrator.

The CBI, which could have never dreamt of Secunderabad being the hub of the cyber crime of such a serious nature but for the Interpol tip-offs, is now taking help of Interpol to trace the foreign banks accounts Arvind may be maintaining for receipt of the percentage commission the parties are required to pay to him for free use of his website.

He has claimed that he had no monetary gains whatsoever from the website he ran for fun but the CBI has refused to accept this as the website displayed the agreement which the parties are supposed to accept before uploading any stuff on it and Arvind has been knocking out material of the parties who did not adhere to the agreement.

The crime branch of Italy had stumbled upon the dirty website of Arvind as it advertised a phone number of Italy for buying copies of the displayed child sex. The raid on the shop traced with the help of the phone number led to seizure of video cassettes, CDs and pornographic photographs and literature on sale. Since the website was not hosted in Italy, the Italian police alerted Interpol which in turn handed over the investigations to the CBI, which acts as the Interpol branch in India.

The CBI suspects that Arvind was running the website on behalf of an American firm as it has seized the agreement documents signed by Arvind on behalf of his dotcom company with North Sky Inc. of the United States.

The pornographic pictures displayed on the website were mostly of children between the age group of six to 12 years and these children are from numerous countries, though maximum pictures were from the United States. The CBI has alerted its counterpart FBI in the United States about an organisation operating as the Missing Children Society as the source of supplying these dirty pictures. END