HYDERABAD: The Hyderabad police on Tuesday said they have arrested an American national for downloading and uploading child sexual abuse materials (CSAM), known colloquially as child pornography.
James Kirk Jones, a 42-year-old US citizen, presently lives in Hyderabad where he works for an MNC law firm.
Following up an Interpol tip about an IP address from which CSAM was being shared, the Cyber Crime wing of the Crime Investigation Department (CID) tracked down James Kirk Jones to his residence in Madhapur, the information technology quarter of Hyderabad.
They recovered a laptop containing 29,288 items of CSAM, 490 GigaTribe (a file-sharing site) profiles and 24 Twitter profiles from which he allegedly shared such materials. Apart from this, an external hard drive and an iPhone with adult pornography on it were also recovered.
James Kirk Jones has been arrested and booked under Section 67A & B of the Information Technology Act 2000.
According to the police, the New Jersey-native who studied corporate law has worked for the firm in Hyderabad since 2010.
A police statement said James Kirk Jones confessed that he has been watching CSAM from his childhood. “He has been sharing the material with 497 persons. Some of the profiles are fake. The material has been seized and will be sent to the Forensic Science Laboratory for examination of the videos and images,” inspector-general Sowmya Misra told New Indian Express.
The officer said the Twitter handles and GigaTribe profiles are being probed to ascertain if any of the people behind the profiles are in India. She said the US embassy and Interpol would be informed of the case.
Jones was remanded to judicial custody on Tuesday.