Paedophile who paid for 'child sex abuse' shows faces jail

Self-claimed hospital ‘research doctor’ Mukhesh Bharti, 46, sought to blame a friend turned drug-dealing blackmailer, named in court as ‘Vicky’ or ‘Vijay’, for the fact police found scores of indecent images of children and vile WhatsApp conversations on his phone.

But jurors rejected the claim that the Punjabi-speaking mystery man was responsible for arranging the sickening live shows, setting up his friend by ensuring Bharti’s face was in the screen recordings of WhatsApp video calls in which children were made to carry out obscene acts.

After deliberating for around 140 minutes, the jury returned to court on Thursday (September 21) to return unanimous guilty verdicts.

Bharti, his eyes fixed on the judge as the verdicts were read out, was convicted of six counts of making indecent images of children, six allegations of causing or inciting the sexual exploitation of a child, arranging travel of another person with a view to their sexual exploitation, and possession of a prohibited image of a child.

Judge Nigel Daly adjourned sentencing until October 23. He ordered a pre-sentence report from the probation service, which will look at whether Bharti is such a high-risk offender he should be given an extended sentence.

“He’s going to get a substantial custodial sentence for this,” the judge said.

Bharti, of Overmead, Abingdon, was remanded in custody.

Mukesh Bharti was undone by the selfies he sent to WhatsApp contacts, giving the prosecution the opportunity to show that he had been using the phone when he was sending messages asking for indecent images of children Picture: Thames Valley Police (Image: Thames Valley Police)

Exploitation

The prosecution’s case was that Bharti was responsible for obtaining reams of indecent images and videos of children from WhatsApp contacts in the Philippines and Thailand, paying for them via a PayPal account linked to his own bank card.

Messages showed Bharti, who had set up an account on Filipino-themed dating website PinaLove,  moaning about being sent material he had already seen. He told one contact, named in court as Philip: “Not even one new video.”

The messages also showed he was asking for ‘live shows’ and videos.

In one set of messages, sent on April 2, 2022, Bharti’s phone asked one contact, ‘Eve’. who she was with. In response, he was sent an attachment – thought to be a picture.

“How old are they? I like,” the defendant’s phone responded. He was told they were ’10 years and nine years’.

Bharti’s phone replied: “Call them, okay?” There followed a negotiation over payment, with the sum of 7,000 pesos – roughly £100 – mentioned for ‘together play’.

Three screen recordings were found on the defendant’s phone, apparently taped WhatsApp video calls with children who were being sexually abused.

The defendant’s face was in an inset video on the recording, consistent with him being filmed on the phone’s front-facing camera while on the call with the youngsters. In one video, he waved back to the children in the footage.

The phone records showed the defendant’s phone was used to search the internet for websites or terms associated with underage sex.

A second phone, acquired after his first was seized by the police, was used to search for terms including ‘what to do if you come across child sexual abuse material’ and ‘how to report child porn’.

Mukesh Bharti sent this image of himself next to Tower Bridge to an online girlfriend Picture: Thames Valley Police (Image: Thames Valley Police)

He was also searching for hotels in Bangkok, the jury was told, and had planned to visit the Thai city to meet a woman with whom he chatted online and claimed to be in a long-distance relationship.

He began a conversation with someone named in the telephone log as ‘F***ing Hell’ on April 27, asking whether they would stay with him at the Hilton hotel and ‘what might happen in the course of such a stay’.

The location of the Hilton was not detailed to the jury.

The person using Bharti’s phone told ‘F***ing Hell’: “If you have a young girl I will give you 10,000.” The court was not told whether the figure was Philippine Pesos, which would work out at around £141 or Thai Bhat (£224).

It wasn’t me

The defendant’s case at trial was simple: the man interested in child sexual abuse material was not him but his friend.

Named variously as ‘Vicky’ or ‘Vijay’, he was said to have borrowed Bharti’s phone and even used his PayPal account in order to pay for the vile material. His friend had given him cash in return for using the phone to send money to others through Bharti’s account, he said.

He thought Vijay worked in computers and met him through his work at Oxford's John Radcliffe Hospital, he said. He had also seen him at Indian shops in Headington.

Vijay would reply on his behalf to women with whom Bharti was chatting online and even sent pictures of the defendant to the female pen pals, it was said.

He claimed to have been bombarded with indecent images of children, sent to his phone. He tried reporting it at Abingdon police station twice, he said. Thames Valley Police had no record of his visit and two staff members working on the front desk on the dates he claimed to have come in.

Bharti suggested that Vijay could have filmed him when he came to his home in Abingdon in March, after the defendant had spent the morning drinking at the town’s Wetherspoons pub The Narrows.

He called evidence from three family members, including his wife, who claimed to have seen the mysterious Vicky or Vijay.

The defendant said his friend had tried to get him to sell drugs and powder. Bharti refused and said he would go to the police, he told the jury. In reply, Vijay was said to have shown him a ‘deep fake’ video showing his wife’s face on the head of a pornography actress.

The video was purportedly sent to family members in India but the disc was destroyed. The defendant’s wife claimed to have been shown it in a video call with her relatives, although her account of what was shown in the video differed with her husband’s recollection.

A Thames Valley Police detective, DC Sarah Osborne, told the court that no trace of Vijay could be found.

Enquiries with the hospital, local shops and electoral and banking records had proved fruitless. Vijay’s phone number was not in Bharti’s phone.

Asked whether the screen recordings of the WhatsApp video calls could have been doctored to insert Bharti’s face into the footage, a tech expert instructed by the prosecution told the jury: “I have seen no evidence within the screen recording itself or any of its media data that it has been modified at all.”

Prosecutors matched pictures that Bharti had sent to WhatsApp contacts, such as this of his TV, to his Abingdon home Picture: Thames Valley Police (Image: Thames Valley Police)

Luck

Closing the Crown’s case earlier this week, prosecutor Matthew Walsh suggested that the defendant had been cursed with ‘rotten bad luck’.

“[Unlucky] that a friend turned out to be a serious organised criminal; a drug dealer, no less, a tech supremo,” he said.

“He’s a criminal mastermind, a man who was seemingly prepared to put unlimited resources into his pursuit of Mr Bharti.”

He said: “The prosecution case is a simple one: that Vicky – Vijay – is a fabrication.”