RAWALPINDI: The special magistrate on Monday extended the physical remand of the accused in a child sexual abuse case by another four days and directed the police to produce him in court again on Friday.

The accused was arrested by Rawat police from his Bahria Town residence on Nov 12 on charges of sexually assaulting children and broadcasting and sharing child pornography on the dark web. He was produced in court on Nov 13 and remanded in police custody for five days.

After the five-day remand was completed on Monday, he was produced in the court of special judge Rizwan Hanif Sheikh.

During the preliminary police investigation, the accused told police he earned around $190 a day, not including money he was given to make pornographic videos, as a member of the International Dark Web, a child pornography ring. Police have recovered more than a hundred videos from his laptop computer which he reportedly sold on the dark web.

The accused is divorced and has a daughter who lives with her mother. He was previously convicted in the United Kingdom for child sexual abuse and distribution of child pornography and extradited in 2009 after completing his four-year sentence.

He was arrested four months after one of his victims approached the police and informed them that he had been abducted, drugged and sexually abused by the accused.

The accused told police that he sexually abused 30 children in Pakistan. The police investigation also suggests that during his time in Pakistan, the accused worked as a consultant for the Civil Secretariat department in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.

Two other people were also arrested in this case, and police are expecting to make more arrests still. Police have also said that a blue vehicle that the accused used to supply children to other individuals has been recovered.

An 11-year-old who was recovered by police was handed over to his parents after being interviewed by police for information on other individuals involved. He told police he was drugged and assaulted by the abused while he was detained for two months, and then handed over to another man by the accused who also abused him.

Published in Dawn, November 19th, 2019