Sometime in 2025, the Kerala Police’s Counter Child Sexual Exploitation (CCSE) team stumbled upon the Pedophile “CHEEZE PIZZA” forum during routine searches on the dark web. It was one such forum where many traded links to child sexual abuse material (CSAM) and directed others to private Telegram groups where the content could be bought and accessed.
While digging up “CHEEZE PIZZA”, investigators spotted a visual of a child who “resembled a Keralite”. The user had posted multiple photos and videos of the same child. This made the police dig deeper. Months of digital tracking followed. Police befriended the suspect online and gained access to the Facebook and Instagram credentials. The trail led them to a woman in Bengaluru, but the account’s location showed Thiruvananthapuram. The clue came from the woman’s Facebook friend list. One of her Facebook friends was from Thiruvananthapuram.
Police traced the profile and then examined the display pictures the person had on Telegram groups used for CSAM circulation. A house seen in one of the images matched the Thiruvananthapuram location they had identified. When officers inspected the house, they found the child. It was the suspect’s niece.
She was rescued and counselled. The perpetrator was arrested and booked.
While one part of the story was the persistence of the Kerala Police officers, it was a breakthrough which was made possible through an artificial intelligence (AI) tool.
The tool worked through enormous volumes of data scattered across platforms to narrow down to the perpetrator. Without it, analysing them manually would have taken much longer.
To combat the surge in online child sexual abuse cases, Kerala Police’s Counter Child Sexual Exploitation Centre, for the first time in India, integrated AI for its investigations. It is an AI-driven investigation platform, called Katalyst, which was being used on a pilot basis. Now, the Kerala Police is working on integrating its latest version of the tool developed by New Zealand-based Kindred Tech and is powered by MongoDB’s data infrastructure.
“With a small team, you cannot manually go through all of it,” said Ankit Asokan, SP Cyber Crime, Kerala Police, explaining why Katalyst is crucial in handling vast volumes of digital evidence. “This problem was amplified by technology. We must use technology to fight back,” he added. While a stockpile of digital evidence is a challenge, another challenge in CSAM cases is that “there is no victim coming to us,” SP Asokan said.
Katalyst has given the Kerala Police the much-needed technological edge to help identify victims and stop the abuse of minors, which demands going through a massive amount of data and proactive intervention. During the 18-month pilot project (starting 2024) between Kerala Police and Kindred Tech, investigators reported 96 arrests. This led to the safeguarding of 20 children and 18 international referrals, according to official figures by Kindred Tech and MongoDB.
“Our mission is to empower investigators with tools that surface insights faster and ensure every child’s case receives the urgent attention it requires,” Auckland-based Bree Atkinson, the CEO of Kindred Tech tells India Today Digital. Atkinson added that Katalyst enables officers to spend “less time buried in data and more time safeguarding children”.
