An American accused of circulating child porn was arrested by Telangana police here on Tuesday.
The arrested James Kirk Jones from New Jersey in the US was working as vice-president for a multi-national law firm. A laptop comprising 29,288 child porn video clips was seized from him.
Forty-two-year-old Jones was staying alone in a flat at Madhapur, Crime Investigation Department (CID) Additional SP Ukkalam Rammohan said. An Interpol alert about an Internet Protocol (IP) address from which child pornographic video clips were being circulated led to Kirk Jones arrest.
On learning that Beam was providing Internet service to that particular IP address, CID's Cyber Crime sleuths identified the end user was living in Madhapur. They raided the flat and caught Jones.
During interrogation, the accused had confessed that he had been watching porn from a tender age. “He maintained that he got addicted to it eventually. So much so that, while being in Hyderabad he could not go to bed without watching child porn,” the investigators said.
The accused met a person through whom he secured a child porn video clip in the beginning. Slowly, they formed into a group and began sharing such obscene videos. “The group had 497 members apparently hailing from different countries,” Mr. Rammohan explained. Some of them were even sharing those videos through their twitter handles. Jones himself created 24 twitter handles, the CID officials said. The accused was living in Hyderabad for the past five years. He was not a lawyer but his work in the law firm was mainly to ensure proper words were used in the legal documents. He would work mostly during the nights and take rest during day time. “Only one maid used to work in his flat. She said that he never misbehaved with her any time,” the investigators said.
Jones family lives in New Jersey. A case under sections 67A and B of Information Technology Act was registered against him. “After filing the charge-sheet, trial would commence and based on the court verdict, a decision on his deportation would be taken,” the CID officials said.
