While addressing a news conference on Tuesday, Hassan remarked that the suspect was part of a four-member gang involved in luring children and then shooting their objectionable videos. Later, they would extort money from the children’s parents after threatening to release the videos on social media.
“Interpol had contacted Pakistan regarding the group,” he said, adding that the group has sexually assaulted 18 children.
The FIA official also shared that one member of the gang is in Hong Kong, another in Dubai, while the third gang member’s location remains untraceable in Pakistan.
Hassan assured that the absconding suspects will be arrested soon.
In 2016, Pakistan criminalised child pornography in a historic first, making the offense punishable with seven years in prison and a fine of Rs0.7 million. The new amendment, titled Criminal Law (Amendment) Bill 2015, also criminalised child trafficking within the country.
The initiative came after the country was rocked by a major pedophilia scandal in August 2015, when it was revealed that hundreds of pornographic videos of children from Hussain Khanwala village in the Punjab province had been made and were being circulated.
On April 26, a Lahore court had sentenced a man from Sargodha to seven years in prison and handed him Rs1.2 million fine after finding him guilty of child pornography – the first-ever conviction in a child pornography case in Pakistan.
A judicial magistrate in Lahore found the convict, Saadat Amin, guilty of belonging to a wider child pornography racket.
He was arrested from Sargodha by the Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) officials, who found more than 650,000 child pornography videos from his possession.
