SINGAPORE: A man who was found with 178 videos and 153 still images of child pornography in his possession was sentenced to a year and nine months’ jail, and two strokes of the cane on Thursday (June 19).
Gan Qi Xuan, 26, had earlier downloaded such content from the Dark Web before categorising his collection on his personal electronic devices and online platforms.
Court documents did not disclose how his offence came to light, but he was nabbed in a raid at his home in August 2023.
On Aug 19, 2024, he pleaded guilty to one count of being in possession of child pornography.
In earlier proceedings, Deputy Public Prosecutor Koh Yi Wen told the court that Gan got to know about the Dark Web around 2015 and found a forum on child pornography on it.
Initially, he did not download anything during his first visit as he was wary of viruses. But curiosity got the better of him about three months later, and he downloaded such videos and images from the Dark Web, including child abuse material.
Soon after, Gan began to access the Dark Web regularly to download pornographic material, including those involving children.
He would view the videos and images he downloaded before sorting them into different folders on his laptop.
When the device ran out of storage space, he transferred all the material to his Google Drive account.
His laptop broke down in mid-2021, and he replaced it with a central processing unit later that year.
During this time, Gan also created a cloud storage account to store his pornographic material as the platform provided more free storage space than Google Drive.
Without revealing details, defence lawyer Teo Choo Kee told the court on June 19 that Gan has lost his place in a university.
Teo also said his client has stopped viewing such child abuse material by 2021 but still had files containing them in his possession when he was caught.
Gan is also extremely remorseful for what he had done, the court heard. - The Straits Times/ANN
