A government junior engineer who allegedly abused 60-odd children sexually over a decade and filmed the acts for uploading on the Internet was on Thursday sent to judicial custody in Banda till November 30.

Police sources said that Ram Bhawan Singh, posted in Chitrakoot with the Uttar Pradesh irrigation department, had abused some 66 children, aged between 5 and 16 years, over 10 years.

However, the matter came to light only when a CBI team from Delhi, from a wing that regularly scours the Internet to unearth child pornography, arrested Singh from his office on Wednesday. The government has suspended Singh.

A police source said that while the family of the accused had been in the dark about his alleged crimes, many of his colleagues knew but kept quiet.

“The CBI is also questioning a man from Allahabad who they believe uploaded the material on the Dark Web,” a police officer in Lucknow said.

“There’s evidence that Singh sent the videos physically or via email to this man, and he deposited money in the engineer’s accounts.”

According to the investigators, Singh lured the children by promising them new electronic gadgets, and that he had gifted mobile phones to several of his victims to buy their silence.

Most of the victims belonged to Chitrakoot, Banda and Hamirpur districts of Bundelkhand, the Lucknow officer said, adding that many of them had been abused
online rather than face to face.

“The CBI has recovered Rs 8 lakh in cash from Singh’s possession besides a webcam, a laptop and several mobile phones in which child pornography material had been stored,” the officer said.

Banda superintendent of police Siddharth Shankar Meena said Singh had been booked under a penal code section dealing with “unnatural” sex and the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act.

Banda upper sessions judge Rizwan Ahmad will hear Singh’s bail plea on November 24. Singh is from Sonbhadra district.