An Indian man has been jailed for 28 years for sexually abusing 83 children online, in a case prosecutors said they could find no direct comparison for.
Karan Kumar, 34, abused girls aged between 10 and about 15 over nearly five years, using fake social media accounts to reach them.
He was sentenced in the Supreme Court of Tasmania in early June.
The court heard Kumar posed as a teenager on apps including Snapchat and Instagram, livestreaming and secretly recording children performing sexual acts.
Prosecutors described the offending as “breathtaking in its volume”, saying no directly comparable case could be found given the number of victims and recordings.
Some victims lived in Australia, others overseas. The offending ran from August 2018 to May 2023 and only stopped when he was arrested.
Kumar kept his camera and microphone switched off so the children could not tell he was an adult.
The court heard he used screen-recording software to keep the material without alerting them.
Police found 551 child abuse videos on his phone and laptop. Some were kept in a secure folder on his phone, locked by his fingerprint.
The court heard he offered money and vapes and at times threatened to leak private images if a child did not do what he asked.
He pleaded guilty to 14 state charges and dozens of Commonwealth offences, including 67 counts of using a carriage service to engage in sexual activity with a child.
In her recently published sentencing comments, Justice Kate Cuthbertson said Kumar’s conduct was “predatory and depraved”.
“You have clearly set about engaging in a course of conduct which involved you exploiting the anonymity of the internet and manipulated the children via deceit, inducements and threats,” she said.
“The fact you were able to access so many children in this way highlights the very real dangers faced by children and young people when accessing social media platforms.”
Kumar, who had previously worked as an Uber Eats driver and in the car rental industry, will not be eligible for parole for 18 years.
An Indian citizen, he holds a bridging visa to stay in Australia and accepted it was inevitable he would be deported in the future.
He was also ordered onto the sex offender register for 25 years after his release.
