Man, 29, arrested in JB for allegedly adopting babies, sexually abusing them & selling videos on Telegram

A 29-year-old man, who allegedly sexually abused babies and young children and peddled video content online, was arrested on Jul. 19 in Johor Bahru.

Johor police announced the arrest on Aug. 29, the result of the month-long Ops Pedo, reported Bernama.

The man is suspected to be the mastermind of a pedophile ring that catered to local and foreign buyers online.

He would record himself sexually abusing babies and young children, including two baby boys and three girls aged as young as two months old.

He then sold the videos through Telegram and the dark web.

Adopted babies

According to the police, he would go on Facebook and look for posts offering babies for adoption.

He would give the birth mothers RM1,500 (S$455) to RM3,500 (S$1,063) in cash, and settle their maternity bills at the hospital.

According to a seized birth certificate, the man was listed as the father of one of his baby victims.

He also secured legal custody of his victims as his adopted children. This is being investigated, said police director M Kumar.

Looked for unsupervised children

The suspect also allegedly targeted unsupervised children in his neighbourhood.

"So far, we have identified and discovered three victims (from his neighbourhood), girls aged five to seven years," Kumar said.

Police have arrested 10 individuals to facilitate investigations, including two Malaysian women, two Indonesian men, four Indonesian women, a Myanmar man, and a Suluk woman.

Two babies and three children have been rescued, and are currently in the care of the Malaysia Social Welfare Department.

Top image via Canva