Sri Lankan Kolambage Dhanushka Chamara Perera pleaded guilty to one count of being in possession of 25 video files depicting child abuse. — Photo by Akshar Dave on Unsplash
SINGAPORE: A man who was in Singapore on a student pass joined a WhatsApp chat group that was later used as a platform to share obscene videos, including those depicting child pornography.
The court heard that one of the videos involved a baby or toddler.
Sri Lankan Kolambage Dhanushka Chamara Perera, now 25, was on Monday (Feb 7) sentenced to a month’s jail after he pleaded guilty to one count of being in possession of 25 video files depicting child abuse.
A second charge of being in possession of more than 2,000 obscene videos was considered during sentencing. These other videos showed sex acts.
The group’s administrator is said to be another Sri Lankan, Hindakumbure Charindu Dilshan Rajapaksha, 29, whose case is still pending.
The court heard that a friend had introduced Kolambage to Hindakumbure, who told the younger man that he had created a WhatsApp chat group with “many Sri Lankan people in it”.
Kolambage then joined the “Singapore Boys Wela group”, which was created in 2019.
The group was initially formed so that its members could share information or news from their home town.
But later on, they started sharing pornographic materials with one another on the platform, the court heard.
Despite these, Kolambage did not leave the group. He later told investigators he was “not really interested” in obscene videos involving underage subjects.
Deputy Public Prosecutor Tessa Tan said: “The accused also admitted in the course of investigations that... although he had tried his best to delete ‘underage obscene videos’, he might have at (times) missed out on deleting them, as there were ‘too many of such videos’.”
The DPP explained that Kolambage’s WhatsApp setting was such that videos and photographs sent by other people would be automatically downloaded into his phone gallery.
“Accordingly, obscene films and child abuse material shared by other participants (in the group) were also automatically downloaded into the accused’s phone gallery,” she added.
Kolambage’s offences came to light on Aug 6, 2020 when a foot patrol officer from the Public Transport Security Command saw him behaving suspiciously at Lavender MRT station around 1pm.
The officer and his colleagues were conducting a check on Kolambage when they saw that the Sri Lankan had a group chat with a display picture showing silhouettes of a man and a woman engaging in what appeared to be a sexual act.
They opened the chat, which had 256 participants, and saw that it had more than 6,000 media files.
Officers arrested Kolambage and seized his mobile phone. Some of the files were later found to contain child pornography. – The Straits Times (Singapore)/Asia News Network
