Gang involved in child pornography busted
PHOTO: File
A gang allegedly involved in earning money from the dark web through child pornography has been unearthed in Lahore.
At least 10 victims have been sexually exploited as revealed in the initial investigations by Federal Investigations Agency (FIA) Cybercrime Cell.
The suspects living in a private housing society in a peripheral area of Lahore would lure a victim through money or other means, rape him and filmed the whole incident.
The suspects afterwards would blackmail the victim to give them money and also coerce them into sexual exploitation again and again. If he resisted, the suspects would threaten him to viral his video on the internet.
The suspects would also earn money (in dollars) by selling these explicit videos on the dark web. The gang consisted of four members including a woman. So far, only one suspect has been arrested.
The FIA Cyber Wing was alerted after the organisation received a complaint regarding child pornography and sexual abuse.
The complainant, the father of a victim, had said that the suspects identified as Arslan Arshad and Ammad Shahzad, living in a private housing society, had formed a gang to persuade and lure the teenagers of the neighbourhood for sexual exploitation and capture their videos without their consent. They would upload the content over the internet for money
The man said his son was trapped by the gang. The suspects on February 15, took the victim to the upper portion of their house and sexually assaulted him and also filmed the act.
Later, a suspect identified as Arslan shared the video with his friend Abid through a social media app. The FIA after receiving the application launched the investigations and took a suspect named Abid Ali, from Arifwala District Pakpattan, into their custody. A huge cache of videos containing child pornography content was recovered from his cell phone.
There were several victims children. Arslan, the prime suspect, could also be seen in the videos raping the children. A spokesman for the FIA Cyber Wing said the arrested suspects revealed the details about gang members. Arslan, Ammad, Moazam and Talha lured minor children by offering them money and precious gifts and capturing their videos.
They would share these videos with a lady named Asma and her driver namely Qamar alias Doda. Asma and her driver would upload the content on the dark web to earn money. The arrested suspects also revealed to the investigation teams that the suspects would buy a lot of money and also bought branded gadgets, expensive clothes and other items from this money.
Read: FIA busts gang involved in minting money through child pornography
FIA Cybercrime Cell has registered a case against the accused under sections 20, 21 and 22 of The Prevention of Electronic Crime Act (PECA) 2016 and section 109 of the Pakistan Penal Code (PPC). FIA Cybercrime Cell was conducting raids to arrest the other accused persons.
Further evidence about the accused persons and their acts would ascertain after their arrests, revelations and analysis of electronic gadgets recovered from their custody.
Pakistan has been quite notorious for child pornography scandals in the last few years. In 2018, a man from Sargodha had been convicted by a court for raping and earning money through child pornography using the internet.
An organisation from the United States had alerted the authorities about the case. Last year, four accused persons were arrested from Faisalabad for a child pornography offence.