Den of Paedophiles: Kerala Couple Shut Down FB Page, #FreeYourMind

FB page ‘Kochu Sundarikal’ functioned as a den of paedophiles, until it was taken down.

At first glance, it was just a Facebook page that appeared to post pictures of children. But ‘Kochu Sundarikal’ was in reality a den of paedophiles, with most people commenting in Malayalam.

Every single post had pictures of young girls, mostly school-going tweens and teenagers. Some of the images included a note by the admin, which said: “What would you like to do to her?”

While most were pictures that seemed to have been randomly taken from personal Facebook profiles, some were pictures of South Indian actors when they were young.

Shocked by the contents of the page when they chanced upon it, Bincy Y and her husband Jaljith, a couple based in Thiruvanthapuram went to the police.

“I am an admin of a Facebook page and we had once discussed the perverse nature of many people online. We got a message from someone alerting us about two Facebook groups. One called ‘Kochu Sundarigal’ and other’ Hot Little Angels’,” said Bincy, a medical transcriptionist based out of Thiruvananthapuram.

The content was chilling and it was clearly a meeting point for paedophiles. Some pictures would get hundreds of likes and there were people who would comment on these pictures on a regular basis.

—Bincy Y, Medical Transcriptionist, Thiruvananthapuram

Bincy and her husband Jaljith approached the Kerala police’s Cyber Cell, who asked them to raise a complaint with Facebook.

We did not want to simply block the page; we wanted the people running it to be caught. Imagine that some parent is uploading the picture of their child and it is being used by someone else.

—Bincy Y, Medical Transcriptionist, Thiruvananthapuram

She was initially told by the police that Facebook would not share details of the page admin, as it did not technically violate Facebook rules and did not show any nudity.

“They were clever to never use any nude pictures, only reason why the page could have survived for quite some time. Kochu Sundarikal in fact had more than 7,000 likes,” she says.

Bincy and Jaljith pursued the case, but were finally told that the page was run by someone from Saudi Arabia and therefore beyond the Thiruvananthapuram police’s jurisdiction.

This is not about one or two pages, or simply blocking the pages. I think in cases that we can, it is important to bring these people to book.

—Bincy Y, Medical Transcriptionist, Thiruvananthapuram

Shockingly, the police have yet no plans to track communities that commit sex crimes online. As of now, this page is not available after Facebook shut it down after the alarm.