Man caught sharing Child Abuse Plans Online

Towhid Choudhury, aged 26, of Camden, was jailed for seven years after he shared his plans to abuse a young child with predators online.

In September 2021, officers from the Met’s online child sexual abuse and exploitation team received intelligence that Choudhury had been uploading indecent images of children to the internet.

They subsequently raided his home.

Officers discovered two phones hidden at the back of a shoe cupboard as well as laptops, a hard drive, a tablet and a USB stick.

While his flat was being searched, Choudhury admitted there was indecent material on his devices.

He asked officers how long he could expect to spend in prison and on arrival at the police station, he said:

“I’m disgusting, I’ve got tendencies.”

Further searches found that Choudhury was active on websites and messaging apps used for the sharing of child abuse material.

Some of his devices used advanced encryption and were set up to automatically delete if he was caught, however, officers acted quickly to secure evidence before this happened.

They discovered that Choudhury had been actively engaging with other predators online.

He shared extreme pornographic videos and images of very young children, including babies.

Some of the videos and images were ones that he had produced himself.

On numerous occasions, he was found to have discussed specific plans to abuse a child under the age of five with others.

At Wood Green Crown Court, Choudhury pleaded guilty to several offences, including distributing indecent photographs and attempting to arrange/facilitate the commission of a child sex offence.

He also admitted to possessing a prohibited image of a child, engaging in sexual activity in the presence of a child under 13, and to three counts of making an indecent photograph of a child.

At the same court, he was jailed for seven years.

PC Pete Howes, from the Met’s online child sexual abuse and exploitation team, said:

“Choudhury is a dangerous offender who was actively planning to abuse a very young child.”

“We have every reason to believe that – had he not been arrested – he would have gone on to do so.

“It is right that he is now behind bars where he can’t pose a further risk to children.”

PC Howes said that Choudhury’s case demonstrates that online offending is just as damaging.

“Choudhury’s in-person offending was discovered because we responded to intelligence about his activity online.”