Banda (UP): Sitting in a remote corner in UP, they frequented the dark web. No one doubted them as a junior engineer in Uttar Pardesh’s irrigation department and his wife allegedly exploited children. They shot videos of the children and sold those to paedophiles across the globe on darknet for the last 10 years.
The two, Rambhavan and his wife Durgawati have always been arrested. Monday the bail plea of Durgawati came up for hearing at a local court here. However, the court deferred the hearing to January 25. On the same day the bail plea for her husband will also come up for hearing.
With the judicial remand of the couple lapsing on Monday, the court also extended their judicial custody by another 14 days till February 2. This information was shared by assistant government counsel Manoj Kumar Dixit here. On the CBI request, the court also added to the case sections related to the sexual offence under the POCSO Act, the counsel said.
Rambhavan was arrested November 16 following which he was also suspended. The arrest was made by a dedicated unit of the CBI specialising in the probe into cases of online sexual abuse and exploitation of children.
The arrested junior engineer is a resident of Chitrakoot district. He is alleged to have victimised about 50 children in the age group of five to 16 years. Rambhavan and his wife carried out their nefarious activities in Chitrakoot, Banda and Hamirpur districts of UP.
During searches, the CBI had recovered eight mobile phones, around Rs eight lakh cash, sex toys, laptops and other digital evidence. Huge amount of child sexual abuse material was found, agency officials had said earlier.
The junior engineer had allegedly been indulging in the crime for the last 10 years. He and his wife contacted and shared the sexual abuse material with other paedophiles globally. Rambhavan used the darknet and cloud services abroad to sell such videos, officials said.
He is also alleged to have told investigators that he used to bribe children with mobile phones and other electronic gadgets. This was done to keep their mouth shut about his activities.
Sources said that Rambhavan and Durgawati amassed huge wealth by selling such sexual videos of children. Efforts are on to trace the total amount of money he earned. Officials said that Rambhavan’s assets are disproportionate to his known source of income. So that angle is also being probed into.
