Court convicts man in child sexual exploitative material case

New Delhi [India], June 13 (ANI): The Rouse Avenue court has convicted a man in a child sexual abuse material (CSAM) case. It was alleged that the Convict was involved in child sexual abuse through the collection, browsing, downloading and distribution of material through the internet, depicting children in sexually explicit acts. The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) had registered a case under the Information Technology (IT) Act in 2016.
Additional Chief Judicial Magistrate (ACJM) Jyoti Maheshwari on Wednesday Convicted Anurag Sharma.
The court said, "It is evident that the prosecution has successfully proved the commission of the alleged offence by the accused, beyond reasonable doubt."
"Accordingly, the accused Anurag Sharma is convicted of the offence under section 67 B (b) of the Information Technology Act, 2000," ACJM Jyoti Maheshwari said in the judgement passed on June 11.
The matter has been listed for the hearing arguments on sentence on July 3.
CBI had registered a complaint alleging that one person, namely Anurag Sharma, indulged in the collection, browsing, downloading and distribution of material, depicting children in sexually explicit acts, in electronic form using internet/ computer resources on 27.09.2015, by using the internet. On this basis, on 27.10.2016, a case under Section 67 B of the Information Technology Act, 2000 was registered.
The court said that the factum of collection is proved by the presence of 183 files, containing child sexual exploitative and abuse material (CSEAM) material and the factum of browsing and download of such CSEAM material can be ascertained from the full path of the files.
The fact that these files were stored in the E drive of the hard disk of the laptop, which was exclusively used by the accused, proves the factum of download of such content and thus, all the ingredients of Section 67 B(b), IT Act, 2000, have been fulfilled in the present case, the court held.
During the investigation, the CBI recovered a laptop and an internet modem from Anurag Sharma's residence. The laptop was sent for examination at the Centre for Development of Advanced Computing (CDAC).
The CBI had concluded that during the years 2015 and 2016, the accused Anurag Sharma collected, browsed and downloaded CSEAM material, in electronic form and thus, committed the offence under Section 67B, IT Act.
A chargesheet was filed against the accused Anurag Sharma on 02.05.2017.
During the hearing the court rejected the defence arguments that the destination IP of the various URLs and the sexually explicit material, involving children, was neither investigated upon by the IO nor was mentioned in the Centre for Development of Advanced Computing (CDAC) report.
"However, section 67 B of IT Act, does not mandate any investigation or recovery of the destination IP and only requires that the accused should have browsed, collected or downloaded the material, in electronic form, involving children in sexually explicit acts," the court said in the judgement. (ANI)