Techie posts child porn in WhatsApp group, held

Chennai: What seems to be the first case of arrest in India connected to posting child porn picture in WhatsApp group, an engineer working with a engineering consultation firm in Chennai was arrested by the cyber sleuths of the state CB-CID on Thursday. Police identified the arrested man as a C Vetrivel, a native of Ariyalur district and residing in KK Nagar, Chennai.

“Vetrivel, a married man, claimed that he had by mistake posted the obscene picture in office WhatsApp group instead of another group which consisted only male members. The arrest was based on a complaint from a female colleague of the arrested man,” the police said. The CB-CID received a complaint on Wednesday from the woman employee of the engineering consultancy company located in Nandanam saying that she as member of a WhatsApp group of employees in her office on July 29 received obscene photographs of a girl child with a comment ‘how is it?’ from another member, who turned out to be Vetrivel.

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“Of course it was not his child’s picture. But, he has taken picture of somebody else’s daughter. We have seized the mobile phone used to take the picture as well as used to send the image,” the police said. Vetrivel is the fifth person to get arrested in last three months by TN CB-CID in connection with posting obscene pictures of young girls in social media and WhatsApp group. Four persons were earlier arrested for either creating Facebook pages, which were pedophilic in nature or posting vulgar comments on such pages.

“You should remember that WhatsApp groups are also public forum where you have maintain socially acceptable decency, before posting any kind of messages or photos or videos. Otherwise you may land in trouble,” a cyber crime cell officer said.