Bhubaneswar/Dhenkanal: A five-member Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) team was confronted by angry locals for over an hour when it raided the house of a suspect in a child pornography case in Dhenkanal district of Odisha on Tuesday, the police said.
Some women and people with batons also prevented a police team from rescuing the CBI officials when the law enforcers arrived at the spot upon receiving information.
The central probe agency team was led by CBI inspector, Delhi, Sandeep Kumar Tiwari, and comprised one officer from Kolkata and three others from Bhubaneswar.
The CBI officials reached the house of a suspect and interrogated him for long hours, police said.
As the interrogation continued for over six hours, the local people confronted the CBI team members and attempted to rescue the man, police said.
After getting information, police personnel reached the place and rescued the CBI team members after facing resistance from some women and young men.
"The CBI team had not given any prior information regarding the programme. However, we have rescued the five members. The suspect has been taken away by the investigating agency and he may be produced before the CBI court in Bhubaneswar on Wednesday," police official Soubhagya Kumar Swain said.
A member of the CBI team said that the man was allegedly posting obscene pictures of children on pornographic sites.
The investigating agency has seized the man's mobile phone and some other materials from his house.
He is suspected to have been working as an agent for a pornographic website, the team member said.
The accused said he had joined a WhatsApp group only two months back after coming across a link on the internet.
"I was only sharing the links of adult content from one website to other sites and groups. I had received $21 (Rs 2,000 approximately)," he admitted.
Meanwhile, raids were also conducted by CBI officials in the houses of two persons at Keutangua village in Jajpur on similar charges.
Officials of the central investigating agency also searched a house in Binayakpur area of Bhadrak district.
The CBI on Tuesday started a coordinated search operation at 76 locations in 14 states against 83 people allegedly involved in sexual abuse of children and posting and circulating abuse material on the webspace, officials said. The central agency has registered 23 separate cases on November 14 against 83 people allegedly involved in online child sexual abuse and exploitation, they said.
Apart from Odisha, searches are being conducted in Andhra Pradesh, Delhi, Uttar Pradesh, Punjab, Bihar, Tamil Nadu, Rajasthan, Maharashtra, Gujarat, Haryana, Chhattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh, and Himachal Pradesh, a CBI official said.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)