SINGAPORE – He came to Singapore to study hospitality management but ended up becoming an administrator of a WhatsApp group that distributed pornography, including those involving children.
On 11 occasions over a four-month period, Sri Lankan Hindakumbure Charindu Dilshan Rajapaksha, 30, who was married and has a three-year-old child, personally sent out 17 clips involving child sexual abuse.
The prosecution said: “The contents of these clips scrape the very pits of depravity. They involve children being raped, possibly being trafficked into sex, and in one clip, a pre-pubescent child (was) filmed having sex with a farmyard animal.”
On Thursday, Hindakumbure pleaded guilty to offences that include distributing child abuse material.
Another Sri Lankan man linked to the case, Kolambage Dhanushka Chamara Perera, then 25, was sentenced to a month’s jail in February 2022.
Some time between 2019 and early 2020, Hindakumbure and his six roommates created a group on messaging platform WhatsApp. He was one of seven administrators of the Wela group chat and was an active participant.
Other Sri Lankans were invited to join the group.
According to court documents, Hindakumbure distributed 943 obscene films in the Wela group chat between March 16 and July 26, 2020. These included videos of adults engaging in sexual activities with one another.
Seventeen video files, which he forwarded in the group chat at around the same time, constituted child abuse material.
The offences came to light on Aug 6, 2020, when a foot patrol officer with the public transport security command spotted Kolambage behaving suspiciously at the concourse of Lavender MRT station.
The officer and his colleagues conducted a check on the Sri Lankan and saw a group chat on his mobile phone with a display picture showing a silhouette of two people having sex.
The officers opened the group chat and saw that it had more than 6,000 obscene videos and files, including child pornography material. They arrested Kolambage and seized his phone.
Hindakumbure was later traced as one of the group chat’s administrators.
On Aug 12, 2020, the police called him to return to his home. Its location was not disclosed in court documents.
When he did, they checked his phone and found the group chat. Hindakumbure was arrested, and his mobile phone was seized.
Deputy Public Prosecutors Chong Kee En and Susanna Yim stated in court documents that by the time the police discovered the Wela group chat, it had 520 participants.
The DPPs added that 256 of them were active participants at the time.
Hindakumbure will be sentenced on March 24.
