Rawalpindi police have arrested a man suspected of sexually assaulting and filming a minor, City Police Officer (CPO) Faisal Rana said on Tuesday.

The suspect was previously convicted for sexually assaulting minors in Britain, where he was working with an organisation for protection of children, and was deported after he had served his prison sentence, the CCPO said. The official added that the suspect had also been tried for the same crime in Italy and was deported from there as well.

The man was arrested after a first information report (FIR) was lodged on the complaint of a 13-year-old boy's mother in the Rawat police station. The complainant alleged that the suspect forcefully took her son to a house in Bahria Town, Rawalpindi where he drugged and raped the victim for four days. The man filmed the minor as well and threatened to release the video if the victim reported the crime, the FIR said.

The FIR was lodged under Articles 367(A) (kidnapping or abducting in order to subject person to grievous hurt, slavery, etc.), 377 (unnatural offences), 337(J) (causing hurt by means of a poison) and 342 (punishment for wrongful confinement) of the Pakistan Penal Code.

Rana said that the man has confessed to raping 30 children in Pakistan and is also suspected of uploading videos of minors on the 'dark web'. Police will become a party in the cases, if parents avoid to do so due to social pressure, he added.

Saddar SP Rai Mazhar told DawnNewsTV that the suspect is a chartered accountant and an expert of the dark web. He was also providing consultancy to the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Civil Secretariat's planning department for which he received Rs300,000 per month compensation from the KP government, the SP added.

In the UK, the suspect was associated with an internationally acclaimed charity, the police officer said.

The suspect is a resident of Islamabad. According to SP Mazhar, the man's wife had left him nine years ago while his parents and siblings had also detached themselves from the suspect.