Police in China have exposed a child pornography ring involving more than 30 underage girls who were raped or molested, and have arrested hundreds of suspects from across China, the South China Morning Post reported.

Police arrested the primary suspect, surnamed Sun, in March after being informed by the US Homeland Security Department that Chinese Internet users had been uploading a large amount of child pornography on the dark web, Xinhua reported.

Hundreds of videos were uploaded on the dark web by the child pornography ring, according to Chinese media reports. The dark or deep web refers to Internet content inaccessible through conventional search engines, and is therefore a haven for cyber criminals.

According to the Jinghua Times, the videos showed more than 30 young girls being abducted. Some were taken by men on motorcycles, and then molested or raped.

The videos were accessed by Internet users more than 20,000 times, a police officer told the Jinghua Times.

Sun, 19, had three terabytes of pornography, including 400 gigabytes of child porn, when arrested at his Beijing apartment, Xinhua said.

Sun, a sophomore student at a Beijing university, revealed that he often purchased and distributed child pornography via instant messaging groups such as QQ, as well as via cloud drives. He would also upload the videos to foreign websites in exchange for porn videos that he "never saw in China", Sun was quoted as saying by Xinhua.

Police said some videos on the dark web were produced and filmed in China, based on the language spoken and the surroundings they were shot in.

"Seeing so many children forced into such a nightmare at such a young age makes every one of our police officers involved in the case extremely angry and sad," said officer Zhang Min, who was in charge of the case.

The members of the chat groups Sun was in would also make requests to other group members to film videos of them sexually violating children, and then distribute these videos.

Some of the victims were neighbours of the suspects or living near their workplaces, officer Zhang said.

Sun was sentenced to 18 months in jail for distributing child pornography, the Xinhua report said. The other suspects are still being investigated.

Source: straitstimes.com