Indian student arrested in WhatsApp child porn bust

NEW DELHI: Indian police Thursday arrested a student on charges of running an international child pornography network through a messaging app, an official said.

Detectives from India’s Central Bureau of Investigation raided multiple locations across the country and arrested the 20-year-old administrator of a WhatsApp group from his home in the city of Kannuaj in northern Uttar Pradesh state.

The group run by the student had more than 115 members from at least 18 countries, including the United States, Mexico, Kenya, Pakistan, Afghanistan, China and New Zealand.

Four other local suspects have been identified and are being pursued by authorities.

“We arrested the administrator of the WhatsApp group and recovered computer hardware and mobiles phones used to upload and store the videos and pictures,” a CBI official told AFP.

The source of the material remains unclear. It contained sexually-explicit acts involving children, the officer said, but did not say if the content was used for commercial purposes.

India has stringent laws against child pornography, and authorities have tried to crack down on producers, distributors and consumers in recent years.

Last year, police arrested a British national on charges of sexually assaulting children at a school for the blind in New Delhi and taking and sharing obscene pictures.

A German court in January put a man — already convicted of sexual offences against minors in 1996 — on trial for raping children and filming them in India in 2015-2016.