Pursuing Google’s tip-off, CBI finds Thanjavur man raped kids, filmed act

CHENNAI: It started as a probe into alleged sharing of child pornography. But when they investigated in detail, the CBI sleuths found that the crime was markedly more horrifying – the accused, a 36-year-old PhD scholar from Thanjavur, sexually assaulted six children and even filmed it.

On Tuesday, dismissing his counsel’s allegation that he was being framed by intelligence agencies for criticising the Union government followed by pleas citing his education and well-being of his aged parents, a special court in Thanjavur found Victor James Raja guilty of all charges and sentenced him to five life imprisonments, one of the maximum punishments secured by the central agency.

Raja came onto CBI’s radar after Google sent an alert, called CyberTipline Report (CTR), to the law enforcement agencies about finding child sexual abuse material (CSAM) in his Google account. His was

one of the 2.59 lakh accounts that the tech giant had disabled in the first half of 2023.

When they booked Raja on March 7, 2023, for exchanging CSAM through social media between 2021 and 2023, the FIR mentioned only section 67 (b) of the IT Act (exchanging material in electronic form depicting children in sexually explicit manner) and 120 b of IPC, for which he would have served a maximum of five years if found guilty.

(Special Public Prosecutor S Sasireka)

However, after arresting him on March 15, the officers found more serious crimes when they interrogated him and made inquiries in his neighbourhood in Thanjavur. The investigation revealed that he was not merely sharing child pornography, but had sexually assaulted six children, one of whom was a five-year-old girl.

If that was not enough, he even made minors perform sexual acts with each other and filmed them, according to the prosecution.

The investigation was not easy. After Google disabled his accounts, Raja formatted his two mobile phones to erase the material. But the computer forensic division in Chennai was able to retrieve WhatsApp chats and images of child sexual abuse from one of the phones. Further, the CTR sent by Google showed that two images were captured by a phone, which was the same make and model seized from his home.

Based on his admission that he had sexually assaulted a 14-year-old boy for four years, the officers spoke with the child. He told them about other victims, including an eight-year-old child whom Raja sexually assaulted and coerced the boy to do the same.

The videos and images contained in Google’s CyberTipline report had the victims’ faces blurred by Raja. His counsel argued that the victims never visited his home because he was a Christian. However, one of the victims told the court that the attire worn by the minor boy in the video belonged to him and identified the girl as the other victim. He did as was told by Raja, the boy told the court, making the case against the man stronger.

“An official from Google, USA, too submitted written deposition in the case providing reasons why his Google account was disabled,” a prosecution source said.

Of the six minors, three deposed against the accused before court while two turned hostile. The remaining victim was a girl aged about five, who, the court noted, “was not able to understand court proceedings and did not depose anything against the accused”.

During the trial, his counsel claimed that Indian intelligence agencies hacked his Google account and planted CSAM for continuously criticising the Union government on social media and sending mails to the Prime Minister’s Office, and produced news reports stating this.

However, special public prosecutor S Sasireka pointed out that the media reports cited by the accused were merely claims made by his family members that he was detained by the CBI for sending mails to PMO. At the time of arrest, Raja was shown the warrant issued by the court and a copy of the FIR. Therefore, the SPP added, “the accused was aware that the CBI case was for uploading CSAM and not sending mail to PMO.”

“From these evidences, it is clear that the accused being a well-educated person has committed sexual assault on children, made photos and videos of sexual assault, threatened the victims and abetted the victims to perform and watch sexual assault on other victims and threatened the victims to not share about the incidents to family members,” the court said.

Finding him guilty of all charges, the special court dismissed Raja’s plea for a reduced punishment citing his pursuance of PhD and septuagenarian parents whom he has to take care of. It then sentenced him to life imprisonment under section 6 (aggravated penetrative sexual assault) and section 17 r/w 6 (abetment to commit sexual assault) of Pocso Act, and sentenced him to five years for charges under section 67 (b) of IT Act, and two years each for section 204 (destroying electronic evidence) and section 506 (i) (criminal intimidation) of IPC.

“This is one of the maximum punishments got by the CBI,” added the prosecution source.