Army officer held for surfing,uploading child pornography

The Cyber Cell of Mumbai Police on Thursday arrested a senior Army officer for allegedly downloading and uploading pornographic pictures and clips of children.

Lieutenant Colonel Jagmohan Balbir Singh,42, was arrested from Colaba and booked under the Information Technology Act.

Acting on a report last September by the German police stating transmission of child porn videos through a server,Interpol traced the server to India after which a report was submitted to the CBI in Delhi in March 2010,police sources said.

Story continues below this ad

The CBI had then directed the Mumbai Crime Branch to investigate. We traced the IP address to Singhs house in Namdar Manzil,Colaba. Cyber cell officers visited the house on Thursday. Singh admitted to having downloaded porn and uploaded them on certain sites, said JCP (Crime) Himanshu Roy. During preliminary interrogation,Singh said he had been surfing child porn sites for the past few years.

On Friday,the Crime Branch sought Singhs custody saying they wanted to find if he had any international or local accomplices. After a two-month investigation,we concluded Singh was involved in a porn racket,which could involve foreigners. Most pictures were of foreign children,all of a tender age of 3-4 years, said Investigating Officer Mukund Pawar. The court granted police Singhs custody till May 12.

Officials said they seized two 80 GB hard disks from Singhs containing over 150 child pornography files.