ISLAMABAD: Pakistani authorities have dismantled a child pornography ring and arrested its mastermind for producing, purchasing, and selling explicit media involving young children, including his own, an official said Sunday.

The crackdown, led by Pakistan’s National Cyber Crime Investigation Agency (NCCIA) with support from international law enforcement agencies, marks the first time in the country’s history that a parent has been formally charged with producing sexual content involving their own offspring.

Speaking to journalists in Islamabad, NCCIA Islamabad Additional Director Muhammad Shoaib Khan said the prime suspect, a resident of Skardu district in the northern Gilgit-Baltistan region, operated through secret Telegram channels and traded illicit media using cryptocurrency.

“We caught the guy, when we received credible information,” Khan said, adding that investigators had extracted “countless explicit files” from the suspect’s mobile device.

“For the first time in Pakistan’s history, a father has been found involved in a heinous crime against his own innocent children.”

The suspect used footage of his four- and five-year-old children as leverage to coerce and entice online users across Pakistan into creating and exchanging similar explicit content involving their own minors, according to officials.

The network stretched beyond family members. Authorities are probing allegations that vulnerable minors, aged four to seven, were enticed or abducted from streets across multiple cities. Key evidence and connections have already been unearthed in Islamabad and southern Punjab.

Khan did not say if any other arrests had been made in connection with the network.

“They used to make videos with children whose ages were from four to six years,” he said, adding that the operation involved trapping young children before distributing the footage nationwide and abroad.

In addition to child sexual abuse, initial analysis revealed videos depicting severe animal abuse circulating within the same network.

Separately, the NCCIA official disclosed the arrest of another suspect in Islamabad less than 24 hours of receiving a complaint regarding a minor girl in Karachi. The girl reportedly attempted suicide following years of online harassment and blackmail.

The agency issued a stern warning to parents who turn a blind eye to cyber blackmail or facilitate cybercriminals within their households.

Khan announced the NCCIA intends to invoke Section 109 of the Pakistan Penal Code, which deals with abetment, against relatives who actively cover up cybercrimes or harbor perpetrators.

“If you know that your offspring is doing something wrong... and you give them a free hand, then you are a part of this crime,” Khan said. “You have to take responsibility for them... If your son is out of control, you should still inform us.”

In response to the growing threat of online grooming, the NCCIA announced plans to launch comprehensive digital safety and awareness campaigns targeting parents across schools and universities in Islamabad, focusing on unmonitored Internet access, gaming platforms, and social media risks.