In a first, AIIMS forensic examines case of serial offender of child sex abuse, pornography

By Priyanka Sharma
New Delhi [India], January 12 : The forensic team of AIIMS Delhi is visiting Chitrakoot in Uttar Pradesh to examine the case of a pedophile, who is a serial offender of child sex abuse and pornography of over 40 minor boys, in a first of its kind case referred to the AIIMS by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) for medico-legal opinion including physiological and psychiatric examination of the accused.
According to doctors at the AIIMS, the accused has sexually molested and abused minors - at least 40 boys (5 to 16 years of age), recorded videos of the act and circulated it on dark websites for fun.
The institute's forensic department has constituted a medical board of nine doctors under the chairmanship of (Prof) Dr Sudhir Gupta, head of the forensic unit.
"The case is referred from CBI to us (AIIMS forensic department) on December 11 for medico-legal opinion including physiological and psychiatric examination of the accused, a serial offender of child sex abuse and pornography of more than 40 minor boys. We are sending a team of doctors to Chitrakoot on Wednesday for further investigation of the crime site and recording the statement of victims," Dr Gupta told ANI.
He added that such incidents of child pornography are reported in America and other European countries due to the high vigilance of the government.
"The AIIMS team will conduct a medical examination of victim boys who were abused sexually. The medical analysis involves mental, psychological, and psychiatric health of children and collection of blood samples to investigate the sexually transmitted disease in the children," said Dr Gupta.
"Child sex abuse and its pornography is a heinous crime and, most of the time, it gets underreported. In this case, too, there was no complaint registered until it was reported by Interpol to the Indian government. The accused used to target minor boys of their acquaintances, relatives, and neighbours," Dr Abhishek Yadav, assistant professor in the forensic department at AIIMS said, adding that societal awareness is important that not only strangers but even people familiar to us can harm younger children.
The tipoff was given by the International Criminal Police Organisation (commonly known as Interpol) in Berlin to the Government of India about the gruesome incident in November following which the CBI came into action.
A case was then registered against unidentified persons suspected of sexually abusing minors at Banda, Chitrakoot, and Hamirpur districts in UP following which CBI arrested the accused in November.
"We have arrested the accused under sections 14 and 17 of the POCSO Act and his wife has also been arrested too. Further investigation is on. During a search operation at his house, we have recovered several electronic gadgets from which he used to film the child sexual abuse content and used to post it on dark websites," a senior CBI official told ANI.
"The accused has been doing such acts for the last 10 years. At least 24,000 emails were generated from his laptops having the content of child sex abuse and pornography. This shows that the accused was in constant touch with people in India and aboard to share these explicit content of child pornography," he said.
The official underlined that the CBI is investigating the case under its special unit -- "Online Child Sexual Abuse and Exploitation Prevention/ Investigation (OCSAE)".
It deals with matters pertaining to online child sexual abuse and exploitation, he said.