Mumbai police probe commercial angle in child obscenity case

Widening their probe in a case in which a senior army officer was arrested for allegedly uploading obscene photographs and video clips involving children on a overseas-based website, police are verifying if the officer was the part of a world-wide child pornography racket and did this for monetary gains.

Lt Colonel Jagmohan Balbir Singh, 42, hailing from Punjab and posted in Mumbai, was nabbed from his residence in South Mumbai on Thursday and was remanded to police custody till May 12, police said.

"We are verifying if there are any monetary transactions after Singh uploaded the photographs and clips of pornographic contents," said a police official on condition of anonymity.

They were going through the officer's bank account details, the policeman said adding that, "If Singh is found to have had monetary gains then it would enable us to establish his role in the World-wide spread child pornography gang."

Singh, who was staying with his wife and two children, has been booked under Section 67 (B) (Punishment for publishing or transmitting of material depicting children in sexually explicit act, etc. in electronic form) of Information Technology Act, they said.

While looking for Internet-related offences, German police came across the obscene contents being uploaded on a child pornography site from Mumbai. They brought the issue before Interpol, which informed CBI in Delhi in March 2010. The CBI brought this issue to Mumbai police, which nabbed him on May 6.