Man jailed 1 month after joining WhatsApp group where members shared sex videos, child abuse material

SINGAPORE — When Kolambage Dhanushka Chamara Perera’s friend added him to a WhatsApp chat group comprising fellow Sri Lankans, he ended up auto-downloading thousands of obscene videos, including some that depicted bestiality and child abuse.

Perera’s actions came to light only after police officers spotted him behaving suspiciously at an MRT station and checked his mobile phone.

The 25-year-old man from Sri Lanka, who was in Singapore on a student pass, was jailed for one month on Monday (Feb 7) after pleading guilty to one count of possessing child abuse material.

Another charge of possessing obscene videos was taken into consideration for sentencing.

The court heard that Perera’s student pass was about to expire in 2020 when his friend introduced him to someone named Hindakumbure Charindu Dilshan Rajapaksha, also in his 20s, who purportedly knew people willing to take over Perera’s rental unit.

Dilshan then invited him to a WhatsApp chat group named “Singapore Boys Wela group”, of which Dilshan was an administrator.

Dilshan and his roommates had created it to share information or news from their hometown and invited other Sri Lankans to join, but the group members soon began sharing pornographic material.

Perera joined the group several months before August 2020. His WhatsApp setting meant that videos and photos sent by other people would be automatically downloaded into his phone gallery.

Although Perera deleted some of the obscene videos he received from the group, other participants began sharing more of this material.

He said during investigations that he was “not really interested” in obscene videos involving underaged subjects and deleted them, but might have “sometimes missed out” on some because there were “too many”, the court heard.

He also stated that after his arrest, he switched off his WhatsApp auto-download function.

He was nabbed on Aug 6, 2020 when officers from the police’s Public Transport Security Command patrolling the area spotted him behaving suspiciously at Lavender MRT Station.

When the officers spoke to him, they conducted a check and found a debit card belonging to someone else. Perera was able to prove that his roommate had lent him the card.

However, officers then noticed that he had a chat group with a display picture showing a silhouette of a male and female, who were seemingly engaged in sex.

The officers opened the chat and saw that it had 256 participants and more than 6,000 media files, some of which was child pornography.

They then arrested Perera and seized his iPhone 7. Of the video files in it, 2,968 were classified by the Infocomm Media Development Authority as obscene, while 25 videos contained child abuse material.

The age range of the children varied with some featuring those who appeared pre-pubescent.

Dilshan has also been charged and his case is pending before the courts. He is accused of distributing child abuse material in the chat group.

Deputy Public Prosecutor Tessa Tan sought one to two months’ jail, noting that Perera did not actively seek out child abuse material but had still allowed his account to function on auto-download mode.

One such video involved a baby or toddler, she added.

Perera’s lawyer, Mr R Kalamohan, said in mitigation that it was “totally unfortunate for this young man to be involved in this group” but acknowledged that he was to blame for not leaving it.

The defence counsel noted that he would be sent back to Sri Lanka after serving his sentence and has “a long way to go in his life”.

Those convicted of possessing or gaining access to child abuse material can be jailed for up to five years, and can also be fined or caned.