Indian Woman Arrested for Running Telegram Porn Network: Sold Videos of Minors for as Little as $1

Telegram has come under fresh scrutiny in India following the arrest of a woman accused of using Telegram groups and private chats to sell child sexual abuse material.

Cyber authorities traced her online activity and financial transactions, highlighting the challenges investigators face in monitoring illicit activity on messaging platforms.

Telegram Operation Leads To Arrest

Police in Firozabad, a city in the northern Indian state of Uttar Pradesh, took a local woman into custody on Thursday evening after discovering she was allegedly running an illicit operation distributing sexually explicit material involving minors and adults via Telegram.

Authorities revealed that the suspect allegedly joined private messaging groups to obtain and download the files before selling links to interested buyers. Reports differ on the prices involved, with one account putting the amount at about $5.25 (£3.88) to $21 (£15.54), while police statements cited in other reports put the amount at about $1.05 (£0.78) to $5.25 (£3.88).

The police action followed intelligence shared by the Lucknow Cyber Cell, a cybercrime unit based in Lucknow, the capital of Uttar Pradesh.

Pooja Mathur, a 29-year-old mother with a six-year-old daughter and a Class 12 education, meaning she had completed secondary school in India's education system, allegedly operated the venture from her maternal home in Rajawali, Firozabad, Uttar Pradesh, without her family knowing about the activity, according to reports.

Police arrested Mathur on 3 September, and she was subsequently sent to judicial custody.

Pooja grew up in Nagla Beech village alongside her younger sister and two brothers following the death of their father in a 2011 road crash. Due to mounting household financial struggles, relatives arranged for her to marry Rahul, also known as Ravi, from Aligarh's Kamalpur area on 11 May 2018.

A daughter was born to the pair two years later, though tensions soon surfaced when Rahul grew suspicious of Pooja's frequent mobile phone use and accused her of infidelity. Constant rows followed, and despite relatives attempting to step in and mediate, matters worsened until the marriage officially ended in divorce in 2022.

Family members organised a second wedding for Pooja in 2023 with Pradeep from Ghaziabad, but similar fears concerning infidelity sparked fresh arguments that ultimately dissolved that union after just four months.

The details of Mathur's marriages and alleged infidelity are not directly relevant to the Telegram investigation and have therefore been omitted from the remainder of this report.

Her Secret Telegram Activity

Relatives noticed a sharp shift in her habits over the preceding year as she grew intensely glued to her device and fiercely guarded it. She reportedly used multiple security locks and prevented relatives, including her brothers, from handling the handset.

Pooja struck up a friendship with a local clinic worker from a nearby village who eventually introduced her to watching films on Telegram as their chats grew more frequent. Once she showed curiosity, the acquaintance allegedly showed her how to obtain and download links for explicit clips alongside regular films.

Following this introduction, Pooja ramped up her time on the application to access adult material, joining large online communities titled 'Romantic' and 'Seller Hub 01', each of which boasted thousands of members. She then signed up for a pornography website by spending about $0.32 (£0.24) to $0.53 (£0.39), using the platform to obtain video links.

Digital Payments Expose the Network

According to the police investigation, Mathur obtained phone numbers from the Telegram communities and contacted users privately to offer explicit video links. Police said she charged different amounts for the material, with reports citing figures ranging from about $1.05 (£0.78) to $5.25 (£3.88), while another report put the price of some material at about $5.25 (£3.88) to $21 (£15.54).

Law enforcement officials obtained about a year's transaction history from her Punjab National Bank account, held with one of India's major banks, as part of the investigation, allowing investigators to examine the alleged payments linked to the activity.

Lucknow cyber specialists routinely track suspicious activity across digital networks, eventually flagging Pooja's online footprint before tipping off local authorities in Firozabad. Officers from the Narkhi and Rajawali police stations in the Firozabad area arrived at her residence at around 5:00 pm on Thursday, 3 September, to make the arrest. She was then presented in court at around 6:00 pm and sent to judicial custody, according to reports.

Family members were completely blindsided when police showed up, having no clue about her alleged online activity until relatives rushed down to the station and officers briefed them on her Telegram operations.

Police said Mathur told investigators that she connected individuals through the messaging platform and charged about $1.05 to $5.25 per clip in exchange for explicit video links, with payments routed directly to her account via UPI, India's widely used instant bank-payment system.

Police Probe Telegram Chats

Inspector Brij Kishore Singh of Rajawali Police Station stated, 'Most of the videos found on the woman's mobile phone were Indian.' Pooja would download those videos herself via Telegram and then sell them to people who had chatted with her there.

Police also said some of the material involved children and adults. One clip featured a 14-year-old child alongside a 45-year-old woman, while another showed a 15-year-old girl with a 50-year-old man.

Narkhi Police Station Inspector Sanjay Kumar Pandey joined the probe due to the cyber nature of the case, with officers diving deep into her mobile records, chat histories, digital payments and bank statements. Investigators are actively tracking down individuals who bought links or interacted with her through the messaging groups while hunting for other suspects linked to the wider syndicate.

'A case involving the downloading of child sexual abuse material from a Telegram group, storing it on a phone, and selling it has come to light,' CO Arun Kumar Chaurasia said. 'A case has been registered against the accused woman under the IT Act and the POCSO Act. The woman has been arrested and sent to jail.'

The IT Act refers to India's Information Technology Act, while the POCSO Act is India's Protection of Children from Sexual Offences law.