Kerala police have arrested five people in connection with a paedophilic Facebook page after tracking their online activities for over a month.
The five people arrested include a man hailing from Malappuram district in Kerala, who is suspected to be the administrator of the Facebook page “Kochu Sundarikal” (meaning Little Beauties). The man lives in a West Asian country and was operating the page from there, he was arrested when he came to his hometown to get married.
The other four people who have been arrested had posted vicious comments on the page, including comments which incited sexual assault. The content of these comments amounts to sexual offences against children under Indian laws.
A Thiruvananthapuram-based couple had lodged a complaint against this page on September 5, after which the police decided to track the suspects’ activities before making a move.
Paedophilic FB Page
In April 2014, the same couple had got Facebook to shut down another page called “Kochu Sundarikal” for paedophilic content. There were no nude photos of children or women on that page, but the comments on it amounted to offences under the Indian law.
After tracing the location of the administrator in Saudi Arabia, the police had to drop the matter, as they do not have jurisdiction in that country.
A senior police official said that the team of officials working on the case decided to wait because they did not want to give the suspects the opportunity to claim that they were not the users. They wanted to make the case as water-tight as possible.
(Dhanya Rajendran is the Managing Editor and Co-Founder of The News Minute.)
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