SINGAPORE (The Straits Times/Asia News Network): A man who was an administrator of a WhatsApp group when he sent out 17 clips involving child sexual abuse was jailed for 18 months and two weeks on Friday (March 31).
Sri Lankan Hindakumbure Charindu Dilshan Rajapaksha, 30, who was married and has a three-year-old child, had pleaded guilty on March 2 to various offences that included distributing child abuse material.
The prosecution had said then: “The contents of these clips scrape the very pits of depravity. They involve children being raped, possibly being trafficked into sex, and in one clip a pre-pubescent child (was) filmed having sex with a farmyard animal.”
A 25-year-old Sri Lankan man, who was linked to the case, was sentenced to a month’s jail in February 2022.
Hindakumbure’s case was the second one involving child pornography this week.
On Tuesday, Ansari Abdul Amin, 36, was jailed for two years for downloading more than 13,600 files of such material.
In Hindakumbure’s case, the prosecution said he had come to Singapore to study hospitality management. His arrival date was not disclosed.
Between 2019 and early 2020, the Sri Lankan and his six roommates created a group on WhatsApp.
He was one of seven administrators and other Sri Lankans were invited to join the group.
Hindakumbure distributed 943 obscene films in the group chat between March 16 and July 26, 2020.
These included videos of adults engaging in sexual activities with one another.
Seventeen video files showed children engaging in sexual activities.
On Aug 6, 2020, a foot patrol officer with the public transport security command spotted the younger Sri Lankan behaving suspiciously in the concourse area of Lavender MRT station.
The officer and his colleagues conducted a check and saw a group chat on his mobile phone. It had a display picture showing a silhouette of two people having sex.
The officers saw it had more than 6,000 obscene videos and files, including child pornography material. They arrested him and seized his phone.
Hindakumbure was identified as one of the group chat’s administrators.
Deputy Public Prosecutors Chong Kee En and Susanna Yim stated in court documents that by the time the police discovered the group chat, it had 520 participants.
The DPPs added that 256 of them were active participants at the time.
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