Banda, UP: Engineer and wife sentenced to death by POCSO Court for sexually abusing over 50 children, recording the act to sell in dark web

Banda, UP: Couple sentenced to death for child abuse
Banda POCSO Act death sentence, image via Sachin Gupta on X

In UP’s Banda, a POCSO Court has sentenced an engineer and his wife to death for sexual exploitation of children. The couple, government irrigation department engineer Rambhawan and his wife Durgavati, were arrested in 2020 in Chitrakoot. The pair not only abused and exploited children, but they also sold their photos and videos on the dark web in exchange for money.

Rambhawan, a Junior Engineer in the UP Irrigation Department was nabbed by the CBI under an extensive operation to track and arrest child sexual abusers on 31 October 2020. 

On 18 February, POCSO Judge Pradip Kumar Mishra convicted both Rambhawan and Durgavati. In today’s sentencing, the judge sentenced them to death for the heinous crime of sexually exploiting children, recording and selling the act for profit and pressurising and threatenig the victims and witnesses to keep quiet.

In 2020, the CBI had stated that Rambhawan and Durgavati had been committing the crime for over a decade. They had victims in Banda, Hamirpur and Chitrakoot districts. The number of their victims was more than 50. The couple used to lure poor children aged between 5-16 years to sexually abuse and record the act for selling on the dark web.

Durgavati was arrested by the CBI a month later in December 2020, she was found pressurising and intimidating witnesses. The CBI’s chargesheet was filed in 2021. It stated that Rambhawan sold child sexual abuse material in over 45 countries through dark web and cloud-based services. Rambhawan also maintained contact with foreign paedophile networks for his activities. 

At Rambhawan’s residence, the CBI had found multiple mobile phones, recording equipment, pen drives, laptops, csex toys and cash worth Rs 8 lakhs. 

Written by OpIndia Staff
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