Karnataka DSP bags national award for child porn probe

BENGALURU: A successful investigation against a man downloading and selling child pornography fetched ‘Cyber Cop of Year 2021’ award to deputy superintendent of police KN Yashavantha Kumar, attached to the cybercrime cell of Criminal Investigation Department.
Kumar was presented with the award by Data Security Council of India in Delhi on Thursday. He was among 55 nominees from different parts of the country in the race.Kumar bagged the honour for his cyber skills during investigation and filing a chargesheet with scientific and circumstantial evidence, police sources said.
While Kumar was not available for comment, CID officials said it was a case in 2020, wherein a 24-year-old student from Mangaluru was arrested by Kumar under Section 67B of the Information Technology Act, 2000.
“The ministry of home affairs had sent to the CID cyber cell details of a few suspects indulging in child pornography. This particular case was more serious in nature since the suspect was downloading stuff from different websites and selling it to persons outside the country. Being an IT student himself, the accused knew how to erase his trail. Kumar used digital forensic tools and techniques, carried out a flawless investigation and succeeded in arresting the accused in less than a month,” officials said.
Kumar recovered around 70 clips of child pornography from the accused, which were stored in laptop and mobile phones. Investigation revealed the accused had sold more than 50 child pornography clips to 30 persons, all foreign nationals, in a span of sixeight months.
This is the second time CID Karnataka is bagging the award. In 2015, MD Sharath, SP, cybercrime division, was honoured with India Cyber Cop of the Year award for solving an online job fraud case.