Balachandran Kavungalparambath has been jailed for 15 months (Picture: NTI)

A city banker who was snared on Facebook Live by paedophile hunters has been jailed for 15 months.

Citibank business manager Balachandran Kavungalparambath travelled more than 100 miles to meet a 14-year-old girl for sex after grooming her online.

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But when he turned up at the meeting point, he was met by members of the Internet Interceptors, a group of so-called paedophile hunters who had been posing as the young girl.

More than 130,000 people watched live on Facebook as the banker broke down in tears as extracts of his depraved WhatsApp conversations were read back to him.


In the footage, the married dad-of-one is seen repeatedly claiming he just wanted to have lunch with the fictional youngster.



At one stage he is ordered to empty the contents of his rucksack, with perfume and condoms spilling on to a table in front of him.

Kavungalparambath admitted he was meeting the girl for sex (Picture: NTI)

Kavungalparambath broke down in tears after WhatsApp messages were read out to him (Picture: NTI)

Perfume and condoms tumbled out on to the table when he opened his rucksack after being confronted. He then admitted he had actually planned to have sex at the hotel (Picture: NTI)

The livestream, which ran for over an hour, began with Kavungalparambath being cornered by three members of the group.

After being led into a hotel room in Birmingham, he puts his head in his hands as he is told the girl he has been talking to does not exist.

He initially claims ‘she told me that she was 18’ before the banker – who was on a £54,000 salary in Canary Wharf, London – admits the girl had said she was 14.

He says: ‘She told me – whoever the person was that spoke to me – that she had a desire and she wanted to have sex, but that was not my intention and I had chatted with her.’

But after being read messages from his seedy chat with the girl, Kavungalparambath, of Blackwall, east London, eventually admits: ‘I meant to have sex with her.’

He later adds: ‘It’s not right. I accept my mistake.’

One of the messages where the ‘girl’ states her age as 13 to 14 (Picture: NTI)

One of the explicit messages that the paedophile hunters read out when they ensnared Kavungalparambath in the Birmingham hotel room (Picture: NTI)

Before the video cuts out, a woman from the paedophile hunter group says: ‘You travelled all the way up from London to Birmingham today to spend the day in a hotel room with what you believed to be a 14-year-old child, to have sexual intercourse with her.’

The live stream ends with Kavungalparambath being led into the back of a police car by officers.

Among sexually explicit messages shown during his trial at Birmingham Crown Court, the banker had told the girl their meeting ‘would end with us making love’.

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One message reads: ‘We will take a shower at the hotel in the morning. We will shower together.

‘Would you be shy?’

A spokesperson for Citibank described the offences as ‘abhorrent’ and confirmed Kavungalparambath is no longer a Citi employee.

He was jailed for 15 months on October 23 after admitting to attempting to arrange or facilitate the commission of child sex abuse.

He was also placed on the sex offender register for 10 years and given a 10 year sexual harm prevention order.

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