36-year-old Ansari Abdul Amin, was sentenced to 2 years imprisonment on 28 March for downloading more than 13,600 obscene photos and videos of children, after pleading guilty to possession of the obscene materials, according to The Straits Times.
The prosecution described Ansari as having an insatiable appetite for obscene materials involving children below 11 years old having intercourse with adults, with some of the videos even involving babies.
He had traded the files from 2016 to 2021 by sending messages to unknown users on Telegram who had publicly offered their collection of such content.
Between 2013 and 2014, Ansari started watching obscene videos on Telegram and stored the photos and videos on his phone by downloading them or importing them into his cloud-based storage account on Mega.
His Mega storage account was created in 2016 but after exceeding the allocated storage capacity, Ansari created a second account to store more content in 2017.
He first began watching the obscene videos of children from 2014 to 2015 after downloading them from chat groups on Telegram and deleted them after watching about 2 or 3 times a week for about 30 minutes each session.
He also kept copies of the files on his Mega storage accounts for his personal pleasure and would trade the files with other users on Telegram before deleting his chat logs on the messaging app.
He was eventually arrested at his workplace on 18 October 2021 after a tip-off about his downloading obscene videos involving children.
He was then found with at least 13,606 files stored on his second Mega storage account showing children engaging in obscene activities and poses.
Deputy Public Prosecutor Bryan Wong sought for 2 and a half years imprisonment for Ansari, saying that his depraved thirst for such content was insatiable and lasted for 5 years.
He added that Ansari was actively participating and fanning the highly sinister demand for obscene videos of children and that he was no “silent” watcher.
DPP Wong added that many of the toddlers, with some of them being as young as three years old, were subjected to unspeakable acts.