Kerala cops hunt for child sex predators

Ali was spreading porn of underage girls using Telegram app A medical transcriptionist who gained the admin’s trust and joined the group helped the police crack the case. Ali has been slapped with various sections under the POCSO Act and the Information

The police are searching for more child sexual predators who were part of pornographic Telegram groups managed by Sharaf Ali who was arrested by the Wandoor police on Thursday.

Ali was spreading porn content of underage girls using social media app Telegram regularly to hundreds of predators who joined four different groups managed by him.

The ‘Operation P Hunt’ spearheaded by the Cyberdome of Kerala police is trying to decode the contact details of the members of the groups. Ali was the only administrator of the groups, said Jaljith Thottoli who helped the police to bust the online platform for child sexual abusers.

The police has identified the mobile numbers of some of the members and approached the respective mobile service providers to trace them.

The police said that the smartphone confiscated from Ali was full of pornographic content in the form of videos and images mostly of girls aged below 10 years.

The police has taken various SIM cards from Ali’s home at Wandoor. Ali, an MCom graduate, was doing a course in a private institute in Kozhikode and was residing in a hostel.

According to Jiljith who traced Ali’s phone number through loopholes in the high security Telegram app, the groups consisted of people with weird sexual interest in children. Ali encouraged them to engage in the groups providing only Malayali children pornography. He also threatened to throw out inactive members from the groups.