Youth arrested for collecting obscene photos of US teen girl
Over 150 nude pictures of at least 30 girls from three countries were recovered from his mobile phone and laptop
A university student was arrested from Khulna for collecting obscene images of a teenage girl from the United States.
The arrest was made following a general diary filed by an official of the US embassy with Gulshan police station a month ago.
A team of the Counter Terrorism and Transnational Crime unit of police arrested Md Samir, 20, a computer science student at a university in Rajshahi, on 21 August from his residence in Khulna, said CTTC additional deputy commissioner Saiful Islam.
Keep updated, follow The Business Standard's Google news channel
After the arrest, over 150 nude pictures of at least 30 girls from three countries, including the US, Canada, and Australia were recovered from his mobile phone and laptop.
The officials involved in the investigation said that Samir developed relationships with these girls on the online social networking app Discord and then collected their naked pictures by trapping them.
Following the arrest, an official of the US embassy filed a case on 21 August over the incident.
CTTC officials said that Michael Lee, the regional officer of the US Embassy in Dhaka, filed a GD at Gulshan police station on 26 July, alleging that a Bangladeshi citizen identified as Sami lured a 13-year-old girl from the US and took pornographic pictures of her.
Samir contacted and had a relationship with the American girl through the Discord app. He later took pornographic pictures of the girl on the app and in his email.
The girl's mother informed the matter to the US Interior Department, and the US embassy filed the GD in that light.
During interrogation, Samir said that he developed communication with the girls through the app and convinced them to send him their nude photos, said the police officer.
Samir was placed on a two-day remand and then sent to jail with the court's order.
Samir kept the nude photos in his collection and did not do business with those, the CTTC investigator said.
Samir's mobile phone and laptop were examined by Additional Deputy Commissioner Ishtiaq Ahmed of the Forensic Lab of CTTC.
He said around 164 pornographic images of at least 30 girls from the US, Canada, and Australia were found on Samir's mobile phone.
During interrogation, Samir said that collecting these pictures was his hobby. He had not sold any of those so far.
CTTC official Saiful Islam said Samir was admitted to an engineering university in Rajshahi in 2021 but could not attend classes due to the pandemic.
His parents did not allow him to go outside. Due to loneliness, he became addicted to his mobile phone. Since then, this young man developed a distorted mentality, Ishtiaq Ahmed said.
