By Staff Reporter
ISLAMABAD: Pakistan’s cybercrime agency says it has broken up an international network that sold child abuse videos for cryptocurrency, and that the trail began with a father who allegedly filmed his own children, aged four and five, and sold the footage.
Muhammad Shoaib Khan, the additional director of the National Cyber Crime Investigation Agency (NCCIA) in Islamabad, told a press conference on Sunday that it was the first case in the country’s history in which a father had been found to have committed such a crime against his own children.
“The accused was involved in making indecent videos of his children, aged between four and five, and selling them,” he said. “The videos were bought and sold in secret Telegram groups through cryptocurrency.”
Khan said the suspect, a man from Skardu in Gilgit-Baltistan whom the agency describes as the gang’s ringleader, was arrested with the help of international agencies. Investigators spent about a month tracing the network. Evidence and links have been recovered in Islamabad, Multan and South Punjab, he said, and raids are continuing to arrest others who helped run it. He did not say whether anyone else had yet been detained.
Khan said investigators also found videos showing the abuse of animals. “Those involved in such heinous crimes will be brought to justice,” he said.
Officials said the suspect used footage of his own children as leverage to push other users across Pakistan into making and exchanging similar material of their own. Authorities are also examining allegations that other young children, aged between four and seven, were lured or taken from streets in several cities. “They used to make videos with children whose ages were from four to six years,” Khan said.
In a separate case, the agency said it had arrested four members of a gang after examining about 60 videos found on a child’s mobile phone. Khan said one suspect befriended children aged between six and 14 on Instagram, lured them with money and recorded indecent videos, which were then sold internationally through WhatsApp groups. The four were arrested in Islamabad on Saturday, and the gang is said to have won children’s trust with gifts, cash transfers and mobile top-ups. Khan said two Chinese nationals had earlier been convicted in a case of this kind.
He also described the case of a girl from Karachi who attempted suicide after what he called years of harassment. She is being treated in hospital. Khan said the NCCIA, working with her family, traced the main suspect to Islamabad and arrested him within 13 hours. He said the man had been harassing and blackmailing her for two to three years.
The agency warned parents who ignore or shield online offending within their own homes. Khan said the NCCIA intends to use Section 109 of the Pakistan Penal Code, which covers abetment, against relatives who cover up cybercrimes or harbour those responsible.
“If you know that your offspring is doing something wrong… and you give them a free hand, then you are a part of this crime,” he said.
The agency plans awareness campaigns on unmonitored internet access, gaming platforms and social media risks, aimed at parents in schools and universities in Islamabad. Khan urged victims to come forward. “If you are a victim of cybercrime, do not remain silent; NCCIA stands with you,” he said. Complaints can be made to the agency’s helpline, 1799, which runs around the clock.
In a separate statement, NCCIA Director General Syed Ali Nasir Rizvi ordered a zero-tolerance approach towards those harassing citizens on social media, women and children in particular. The statement said he chaired a meeting attended by Khan, Director IT Atif Abbas, social media in-charge Tayyaba Daulat and public relations officer Mehboob Elahi, which was briefed on social media monitoring, cyber harassment cases and the handling of complaints. Rizvi also ordered strict monitoring of accounts spreading fake news, negative propaganda against state institutions and public panic, according to the statement.
On 23 October, the NCCIA’s Karachi zone said it had arrested suspects from three firms allegedly producing, promoting and selling sexually explicit animated cartoons and animated child sexual abuse material to international customers. Officials have said the firms turned videos involving children into animated content and sold it to clients in the US and Germany.
The agency has announced similar cases before. In June 2025, it dismantled an international network that more than 50 children had been identified as victims of, with some parents reportedly complicit. The NCCIA called that the first time an organised network of that scale had been exposed in Pakistan.
Research this year points to how little reaches the authorities. A Unicef-backed report, ‘Disrupting Harm in Pakistan’, published in September, estimated that about 1.5 million internet-using children aged 12 to 17, roughly one in 16, experienced technology-facilitated sexual exploitation or abuse in a single year. It found that around 85 percent of perpetrators were known to the victims. Some 71 percent of victims told no one, and none of the children surveyed reported the abuse through formal channels such as the police, helplines or social workers.
The child protection charity Sahil counted 1,914 reported cases of child abuse across Pakistan in the first six months of 2026. They included 1,015 of child sexual abuse, 558 abductions, 101 missing children, 35 child marriages and 98 cases of pornography following sexual abuse. Girls made up 58 percent of victims, and children aged 11 to 15 were the most affected. Sahil compiles its figures from national and regional newspapers, so they cover only cases that reach print. Punjab accounted for about 80 percent of the cases.
Copyright © 2021 Independent Pakistan | All rights reserved
