Trigger warning: This report contains graphic descriptions of sexual abuse of minors.
New Delhi: He was just three years old. One day in October 2020, as his mother was about to give him a bath, he clutched her hand, head shaking in refusal, tears brimming, and pointed to his groin area.
She checked him and then—froze. The skin around the child’s penis and his entire rectal area was inflamed, with visible tears, injuries and scars. The boy tried to speak, but could not. He was too young to find the words. He could only cry.
For days, the child underwent treatment for sexual abuse endured at the hands of 50-year-old Ram Bhawan, a former junior engineer from Uttar Pradesh’s Irrigation department. Even then the mother—who worked as a cook in Ram Bhawan’s house at Chitrakoot for two years—did not understand why her son would tremble at his sight.
She continued working at his house but her son continued to cry inconsolably. Suspecting something wrong, she quit. A few weeks later, the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) contacted her and showed her the videos Ram Bhawan had recorded.
“He put his penis inside the mouth of my three-year-old and also took my baby’s penis in his mouth and filmed it. He then put his penis in his bottom,” she said in her statement, originally in Hindi, seen by ThePrint.
“I saw those videos with my boy in it and that man assaulting him like this and I was about to faint. I could not believe my eyes. I had no clue,” the three-year-old’s mother told ThePrint.
The boy, now 10, has grown withdrawn. He barely speaks to anyone, no longer goes out to play, and trembles at the sight of strangers. It’s a childhood ruined, on its way to being a life wasted.
This 10-year-old is just one of Ram Bhawan’s many underage victims. ThePrint managed to trace and talk to some of these traumatised children and their families in an effort to confront and experience firsthand the depths of the depravity they almost drowned in.
Ram Bhawan and his wife Durgawati were arrested in 2020 and convicted by the court last month. Both were sentenced to death as the court termed the case “rarest of the rare” and a crime of an “exceptional and heinous nature that leaves no room for reformation, necessitating the ultimate judicial deterrent to meet the ends of justice”.
“He doesn’t talk to anyone. He doesn’t smile anymore. His growth seems to have stopped. His height hasn’t changed much. Even now, the moment I try to ask him about what happened, he cries inconsolably,” the boy’s mother told ThePrint. “He used to be brilliant, very sharp for a three-year-old. Now he is just aloof.”
The CBI has placed the testimony on record, originally in Hindi, as the child was unable to recall the abuse and would start screaming at the mere mention of Banda. “He doesn’t want to go to Banda. He is terrified. When we went to court, he refused to step out of the vehicle and began screaming. He constantly needs reassurance that he is safe. He doesn’t leave my side, cries at the smallest things, and has no friends,” she said.
She added that six to seven children would be present at Ram Bhawan’s house at any given time. He would ask her to cook different dishes for them every day, she said, unaware that the food was being used as a lure. “Working at his house was my biggest mistake. Had I known the children he brought home were being abused, I would have killed that monster. I cannot believe he did this to my only son. If I hadn’t seen the video, I would never have believed what happened to him,” she said between sobs.
Also Read: ‘Uncle-aunty sexually abused me’—chilling testimonies that sealed death sentence for Banda couple
Lured and abused
One victim was 10 at the time of the abuse. For this child, getting having access to videogames like GTA5 and Tekken 7 on a Sony PS4 in 2018 was a dream come true. As he eagerly took the. gaming console, Ram Bhawan made his first move–removing the 10-year-old’s pants and then his own. The child was startled, but couldn’t get away as Ram Bhawan held him down firmly on the bed.
According to the CBI investigation, what first began with disrobing, graduated to Ram Bhawan showing the child sexual content on his mobile phone and then forcing oral sex to the point of ejaculating on his face, a particular fetish of Ram Bhawan that the CBI found in most of the abuse cases, his signature move.
As days passed, the 10-year-old was joined by more children aged between five and 16 years old, who too were sexually abused. They were not just filmed but also shown live in the act to people on video calls. Moreover, their videos were also sent to over 43 countries via email and sold on the dark web.
For this 10-year-old, the assault went on for three years. The price to keep quiet? Rs 10 after each assault, access to smart phones, PUBG, Sony PS4 and some good food. “I was 10 years old. Ram Bhawan used to put jasmine, coconut oil on our anus and his penis and forced himself on us. We would be in pain, could not walk but he used to threaten us after that, and also paid us money,” he testified (original statement in Hindi). “He would have sex with children between four and 16 and then make videos and click pictures and also use sex toys on us,” he stated.
“He would also call his friends on video to show us naked and told them: ‘Yeh bache bahut maze dete hai. Bata dena tumhare pass bhej dunga. Tum bhi maze le lena (these children give much pleasure, I can send them across for your enjoyment)’,” the 10-year-old stated.
These are just two of the 33 graphic testimonies placed on record by the CBI probing a horrific case of child sexual abuse case in which several children, some as young as three, were abused for over a decade.
This case is not confined to India. It has also exposed a vast, transnational network. Videos recorded in a room in Chitrakoot were being circulated and consumed as pornographic content across 43 countries, with several individuals reportedly paying for access.
The investigation has now taken on a global dimension. The CBI has written to law enforcement agencies in all 43 countries, seeking to identify those who accessed the content through specific email addresses and to initiate action against them.
According to agency sources, while 33 of the children have been identified and traced, many more may remain untraced due to the probe’s limitations. Investigators suspect that Ram Bhawan, who continued the abuse for years, may have had several more victims.
The children invariably shudder at the mention of Ram Bhawan. Speaking to ThePrint, one of the victims said, “I can remember the day he first touched my private parts while I was engrossed in a game of GTA5 on the Sony Play station in that room with a yellow dressing table. I was seven years old. I went numb. Before I could react, he then made me touch him inappropriately and then handed over 10 rupees to buy some goodies, threatening murder if I told anyone.”
“What followed was years of abuse. It is strange but it is all so blurred in my head now. All I can recall is that dreaded yellow bed, dressing table stacked with lubricating oils, and that dingy room with a PS4,” he said. “I used to be in a lot of pain,” he said.
Night vision cameras
Ram Bhawan’s two-bedroom residence at SDM Colony in Chitrakoot was the scene of most of his crimes. One room was set up and designed for just this. A yellow dresser stacked with creams and bottles of jasmine, coconut, and almond oil for easy penetration, a pile of 10 smartphones to lure children, a Sony PS4 and a room rigged with spy and web cameras with face trackers to record the abuse from all angles, along with a digital handheld camera to take still pictures.
The room was also stacked with sexual paraphernalia like vacuum pumps, vibrator rings and toys. “The cameras were hi-tech. These were night vision ones that catch good quality footage even in the dark, with face-tracker technology. They were installed on the ceiling for a clear view,” a source privy to the investigation said.
On 2 November 2020, the CBI carried out a search at Ram Bhawan and Durgavati’s residence in Chitrakoot and recovered all these gadgets. During the raid the CBI also recovered a 42-page diary that Ram Bhawan maintained, listing websites for child pornographic content along with email IDs to which he sent his videos.
According to one source, Ram Bhawan targeted children from underprivileged backgrounds, especially those who had lost their fathers could thus be made dependent for needs like school fees. “The victims, all between the ages of four and 16, were children he could access easily and who were financially dependent on him. This included children of distant relatives, neighbours and domestic helps who trusted him and could be easily threatened. He exploited their vulnerability,” the officer said.
Such was Ram Bhawan’s level of perversion that he would abuse his victims at every opportunity, however minor. If only a few minutes were available to him, he would just take photographs of children by removing their lowers alone, the investigation has revealed.
The CBI recovered over 2 lakh videos and photos of children from Ram Bhawan’s phones, several memory cards, pend drives and google drives that he had stored over the years. In his interrogation Ram Bhawan confessed that he was sexually attracted to male children and was interested in indulging in unnatural sex with “tender-aged boys”. A psychological analysis of Ram Bhawan was also done by a medical board from AIIMS that concluded that he had an inclination towards male children and this was amplified by his exposure to child sexual abuse material available on the Internet.
Stages of abuse
Initial investigation in the case took the CBI to 25 victims, whose medical examinations showed signs of chronic and penetrative sexual assault without exception. More victims were identified eventually as more videos were recovered from pen drives and memory cards seized.
“All the victim suffered immense physical pain during and after the act due to repeated penetration but did not report it to anyone out of fear,” the officer said. Medical reports put on record by the CBI shows the most common injuries were thickening of perianal skin scars around anus, anal canal becoming loose and thickened rectal mucosa.
The extent to which the children were conditioned by Ram Bhawan is evident from their testimonies. While recounting the abuse, they referred to Ram Bhawan in familial terms like nana, dada, chacha and uncle, and to Durgawati as dadi and chachi,” the officer said.
A nine-year-old, who was just four at the time of the assault, said in his statement that Ram Bhawan caused serious injuries to his private parts. “Dadi Durgawati used to send me to his room while other children were indulging in dirty acts and I was forced to participate. It was so painful. I had trouble passing urine and stool for days,” he stated.
Children also revealed in their testimonies that, while being assaulted, they thought of running away but could not, as Durgawati would lock the room from outside. Even when some of them cried out for help, no one responded, the officer said. In his testimony, one 10-year-old said, “Durgavati dadi made sure that nobody entered the room when I was inside.”
Nine of the victims were found to be below 12 years of age, 13 were between 12 and 18 and three above 18.
One officer said that besides forcing children to have sex with each other, Ram Bhawan also forced them into sexual acts with Durgawati and he would just sit and watch. One testimonial by a 10-year-old said, “Ram Bhawan dada always touched and told me that my penis is very long, and I should have sex with Durgawati. One day he took me to her room and made me have intercourse with her while she was asleep.”
The officer said Ram Bhawan’s acts have left lasting scars on the children, as he often forced them to engage in such acts in groups. A boy who was abused by Ram Bhawan at the age of eight said that he often assaulted his friends in front of him. “Dada has been assaulting me and my friends in front of me. He used to encourage us to have sex with each other. He assaulted me for six years,” the boy, now 14, said.
Another boy, who was 10 years old in 2020 and was assaulted for over four years, said his mother worked at Ram Bhawan’s house as a domestic help. He stated that Ram Bhawan would often call him over on the pretext of giving him food and then force him to have sex with other children.
“He used to put his penis inside my mouth and he used to have sex with five other boys in front of me. I used to be in a lot of pain. He used to give me Rs 10 and used to give me mobile phone and video game. I was scared of him, which is why I did not tell anyone,” the boy stated.
According to police records, during questioning he also told the CBI that he had gifted mobile phones to some of the elder children and had kept the boxes to “keep a recording memory of the phones that he had given away.”
Also Read: More and more POCSO cases are being settled by victim-accused marriages
‘Predator on the move’
Ram Bhawan did not confine his abuse to his home but it extended wherever he went. While serving as a junior engineer in the UP irrigation department, he travelled to Hamirpur in 2018 for a canal-digging project. There, he identified eight more victims, including some at the house of a man he had appointed as the supervisor for that project.
Investigators said he began frequenting the supervisor’s house, where the man had four children, and targeted them. He groomed the neighbour’s child by giving him a mobile phone and sending him sexually explicit videos, later enticing him with cash rewards to record similar videos involving other children. “He was always on the lookout for new victims,” an officer said.
“He sent the child Rs 10 every week and asked him to share nudes and videos. This continued for two months. After that, he gave him another smartphone and asked him to shoot group oral and sex videos with other children in a field and send them to him. He would send them sample sex videos on how to do it,” the officer said.
Videos sent to 43 countries, most to US
Ram Bhawan not only sexually abused children and filmed them but also shared the recordings with people interested in such content, primarily in foreign countries. Investigation revealed that after storing the videos and photos on his system and memory cards, he shared them via Gmail and cloud services like Mega.nz and Dropbox. He connected with these individuals on Facebook, and said they also sent him similar content.
“He had maintained a list of email accounts and other IDs—some on Facebook, others on Skype, drives, for over a decade to send and receive child abuse material,” the officer explained.
According to evidence put on record, Ram Bhawan was found to have sent child sexual abuse material to the United states, Australia, Afghanistan, Bahamas, Brazil, Canada, Egypt, Bulgaria, UAE, Mexico, Pakistan among others. According to agency sources, investigation uncovered 150 email ID across 43 countries. Following which CBI has forwarded detailed international references (IRs) to the respective 43 foreign jurisdictions for appropriate legal action.
Digital footprint, Geolocation—how CBI reached the couple
The abuse continued for over a decade and could have persisted much longer, victimising many more children, had Interpol not alerted the CBI about child sexual abuse material being shared from India to other countries.
In this case, the digital footprint of accused Ram Bhawan were picked up in an ongoing investigation in Australia and an alert shared by the Europol, the Australian Federal Police, and the US-based National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC) with the Interpol Crime Against Children Unit in Singapore, which promptly forwarded the intelligence to the CBI.
According to CBI sources, Interpol shared 679 photographs and 34 videos of children that had surfaced in Australia after authorities there identified the material as originating from India. This was determined from Hindi conversations in the videos, the appearance of those involved, and linked digital details such as email IDs and phone numbers used to circulate the content. “We received a complaint along with a pen drive and were asked to examine it. The foreign law enforcement agency had identified that the videos were from India and were being sold on the dark web, and shared the material with us,” a source said.
Interpol, which maintains a database accessible to all member countries including India, shares intelligence inputs, known as Interpol References (IRs), with national law enforcement agencies. These efforts are supported by the NCMEC which operates the Cyber Tipline to process reports of child sexual exploitation.
“These reports are detailed and include geolocation data and identifiers such as email addresses, usernames and IP addresses of suspected offenders,” an officer said. In this case, such inputs helped trace where the videos were uploaded and shared from, leading investigators to Ram Bhawan.
The CBI then carried out a thorough probe, analysing digital trails including IPDRs, EXIF metadata, email subscriber information and other electronic footprints. Additional evidence such as CDRs, metadata and email records was examined to establish the identity of the accused and confirm their links to the crime.
While IPDRs help trace who was using the internet, from where, and when, Exchangeable Image File Format (EXIF) data helps establish when, where, and on which device a photo or video was created. “This case demonstrates the effectiveness of global information-sharing mechanisms among law enforcement agencies,” the officer said.
The tough part
According to officers privy to the investigation, a major challenge in a case as sensitive as this was convincing the children, who had suffered years of abuse, and their parents to testify in court.
‘“Unlike conventional cases, no child had reported the crimes. Years of fear, coercion and trauma had silenced them,” an officer said. “We not only made extensive efforts to trace the victims of abuse, including children as young as five across districts of Chitrakoot, but also convinced their parents to testify. It was our job to make the children comfortable. It took a great deal of patience to build that trust and ensure they felt safe enough to speak. Moreover, most victims were from economically weaker backgrounds and feared speaking against Ram Bhawan, which had to be addressed.”
The children ThePrint spoke to said that the CBI officers, in fact, made them feel at home, creating an environment safe enough for them to open up. Dhara Singh Meena presented the case on behalf of the CBI in court.
During the investigation, medical experts were consulted to testify to the severe physical and psychological damage caused, the officer said. According to the officer, the probe was conducted alongside comprehensive medical and psychological evaluations by doctors from AIIMS.
Another challenge was reviewing hours of video footage, frame by frame, to extract segments in which the faces of both Ram Bhawan and the children being abused were clearly visible. This was necessary to rule out any defence that he was not the person in the videos. “To go through those videos day in and day out, for hours, frame by frame, was harrowing. It was done professionally, but it does take a toll,” the officer said.
Using the latest forensic technologies, the team conducted a digital analysis of all seized devices, carried out frame-by-frame examination of videos to identify the accused, and undertook detailed scrutiny and mapping of social media accounts to build a watertight case, the officer added.
Based on this evidence, the CBI identified seven additional Indian nationals involved in similar crimes, leading to the registration of separate FIRs. “A lot of procedure also has to be followed. The special court is required to conduct proceedings in camera. The child must not be exposed to the accused while recording evidence. The child’s statement is to be recorded within 30 days of the court taking cognisance, as far as practicable, and the trial is to be completed within one year. We ensured everything was done properly,” the officer said.
The CBI has a specialised unit called the Online Child Sexual Abuse and Exploitation Unit, set up in 2019 to probe cases of online child sexual abuse and exploitation. It works in close coordination with international law enforcement agencies, Interpol and the US based NCMEC.
“Intelligence inputs are processed in this unit and actionable information is shared with the concerned states. In the last five years, the unit has registered 65 cases, identified and rehabilitated 68 victims, and identified and arrested 70 perpetrators, thereby preventing further victimisation of minors,” a CBI officer said. “Moreover, by aggressively advocating for both interim and final relief, the unit has facilitated the award of over Rs 3.5 crore in total compensation across various jurisdictions in India,” he said.
This is an updated version of the report.
(Edited by Nardeep Singh Dahiya)
Also Read: 4-yr-old boy ‘locked in dark room, tortured’. Delhi kindergarten horror in French embassy premises