After driving 100 miles to meet up with a 14-year-old Coventry girl he had spent two weeks grooming online, a married man whose wife is pregnant was instead met by a self-styled paedophile hunter.
Sandeep Kumar fled when he was confronted by the man who had set up the fake profile of a girl called Abi, but was caught and handed over to the police.
Following his arrest, Kumar (34) of Dane Road, Southall, Middlesex, pleaded guilty to attempting to meet a child following grooming and sexual communication with a child.
And at Warwick Crown Court he was sentenced to 16 months in prison suspended for two years and ordered to take part in a rehabilitation activity and to register as a sex offender for ten years.
Prosecutor John Brotherton said Joseph Haggerty was a member of a group called Lady Godiva Hunters which tries to catch sexual predators who target young girls online.
“He would set up a profile on chat sites where he would pose as a young girl, and waits for people to contact him. He will at once tell them his purported age, in the guise of a young girl.
“If a person then engages in conversation, he will continue to message them as the girl.”
Mr Brotherton said that on November 18 last year Mr Haggerty set up the profile of ‘Abi’ on various social media sites – and the same day Kumar made contact.
Chat became sexual in nature, with him asking her to perform oral sex on him.
Kumar, who was calling himself Raj, sent her a picture of his private parts and asked her to touch herself, and to show herself doing so via a webcam.
The conversations developed into an arrangement to meet.
After Abi said she lived with her mum, who worked nights, leaving her alone at her ‘home’ in Dawes Close, Coventry, on December 3 Kumar drove the 100 miles to see her, taking a bottle of WKD as proof that it was him.
He was met in the street by Mr Haggerty who revealed who he was.
When he was interviewed, he admitted he had been browsing the profiles of girls aged between 14 and 20, and he accepted his exchanges with Abi, knowing she was 14, were of a sexual nature.
He said he had an interest in children, and had contacted other girls he believed to be 14 with the intention of meeting them, added Mr Brotherton.
Ian Windridge, defending, conceded: “His search for companions was clearly of an inappropriate age-range, but there was no actual girl exposed to this conversation or this image.”
Mr Windridge pointed out that Kumar, a married man whose wife has ‘a child on the way,’ had spent a month in jail since his arrest – and argued he could therefore be dealt with by a suspended prison term.
Sentencing Kumar, Recorder Anthony Potter told him: “You agreed to meet up with someone you believed to be a 14-year-old girl who was on her own at home, with the intention of engaging in sexual activity with her.
“Had Abi existed, I have no doubt I would have concluded this was a case of raised harm – but she didn’t.”
