PANJIM: The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) has uncovered a paedophile ring in Goa as three ‘likely minor victims’ have been identified, close to a month after investigators arrested a Mumbai-based chef in the State.
The special crime team of CBI has made a successful attempt to contact the families of the victim boys, one of who hails from North India.
Altamash Ansari of Bhiwandi, Maharashtra has been allegedly employed in Goa since 2013-14. The CBI team had zeroed in on him on July 22, eight months after a junior engineer of Chitrakoot district in Uttar Pradesh was arrested for allegedly victimizing about 50 children in the age group of 5-16 years in the districts of Chitrakoot, Banda and Hamirpur. Sources said the suspended government officer’s interrogation led the team to Ansari.
Sources told Herald that the accused men connived with unknown person(s) to record children forced into doing sexual acts. The obscene content was then shared globally using dark net and cloud based storage services. The accused are operational for over 15 years, running a rather larger paedophile network.
The three identified victims in the age group of 14 and 16 years are being counselled for their deposition as several other children across different parts of India are in the process of being identified to produce a watertight charge sheet against the accused.
While it was fortunate that these children are safe, a recent report of the National Crime Records Bureau indicates that missing children cases rose by 31 per cent from 2018. In 2019, 62 cases of missing children were reported while 37 missing children were rescued and traced.
With child labour, trafficking and sex tourism industry considered being the fallout of unchecked tourism by and large, the State has witnessed pedophile cases in the past as well.
