New Delhi, March, 3: The CBI has identified 10 more victims
of alleged child sexual abuse by now-suspended Uttar Pradesh Irrigation Department
junior engineer Ram Bhuwan, the alleged paedophile, also accused of selling the
illicit acts with kids on the dark web, officials said.
Further expanding its exhaustive probe, the central probe agency
recorded the statement of these 10 male victims to buttress its charges against
Bhuwan who was arrested along with his wife and a suspected accomplice, they
said. The person arrested from the national capital, whose identity is being
kept secret by the CBI, is understood to be an important link in unravelling
the mystery of the 50-year old junior engineer using the dark web to sell child
sexual abuse material and making money from it, they said.
The agency team has so far identified around 35 victims and is
in the process of identifying others, they said. The CBI is also working on
deciphering digital evidence from recoveries made during searches at the
premises of Bhuwan and his suspected accomplice, they said.
The agency had recently filed its charge sheet before a special
court in Banda in which the CBI had presented statements of about 25 victims,
all males between the age of 4-22 years, and the reports of digital evidence
collected during searches at the residence of Bhuwan.
The junior engineer was arrested on November 16, 2020 while his
wife was taken into custody on December 28, 2020. They were arrested by a newly
established special CBI unit, which is handling online child sexual abuse,
after it started tracking and apprehending paedophiles operating on the
internet. They busted his alleged activities after trailing him for days, they
said.
The accused, a resident of Chitrakoot district in Uttar Pradesh,
was arrested from Banda by the Special Unit of the CBI specialising in 'Online
Child Sexual Abuse and Exploitation Prevention/ Investigation (OCSAE). Both are
in judicial custody. The agency has charged Bhuwan and his wife under IPC
sections related to criminal conspiracy (120-B) and homosexuality (377) along
with provisions of The Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (POCSO) Act
and Information Technology Act.
The Supreme Court had struck down Section 377 of the IPC but
legal advice received by the CBI suggested that since the crime period spans
before the law was quashed, the provisions can be invoked. The 50-year old Ram
Bhuwan stands accused of allegedly abusing around 50 children in the age group
of 4-16 years in three adjoining districts of Uttar Pradesh –Hamirpur, Banda,
Chitrakoot — for over a decade and selling those recorded sexually explicit
acts on dark web.
"The accused allegedly used electronic items and gadgets to
lure children falling in the age group of 5-16 years. The scrutiny of the
emails of the accused had revealed that he was allegedly in constant touch with
several individuals (both Indian and foreign nationals) for the purpose of
sharing child sexual abuse material," CBI Spokesperson RC Joshi said. He
said the accused had allegedly created and shared huge quantity of child sexual
abusive material, over the years, through the internet using various social media
platforms and websites over the darknet, etc.