Who is Ghaziabad's YouTuber Kunwari Begum, arrested for teaching viewers how to sexually abuse infants

A 25-year-old YouTuber, Shikha Matrey from Ghaziabad, known as 'Kunwari Begum', was arrested on Thursday for allegedly sharing pornographic content and promoting methods to sexually abuse infants on her YouTube channel, according to a TOI report. The arrest followed a complaint by Deepika Narayan Bharadwaj, founder of Ekam Nyaay Foundation and an independent journalist, who first reported the channel's content on social media platform X.

Bharadwaj highlighted the presence of pornographic and child abuse-promoting videos, urging their removal and calling for police action against Matrey. Consequently, an FIR was filed on Monday at Kaushambi police station, leading to Matrey's arrest on Thursday. According to ACP (crime) Ritesh Tripathi, Matrey confessed during interrogation, revealing that she began posting the videos after being asked about masturbation on her channel. Additionally, other YouTubers initiated a "jail bhejo" campaign against her once the channel's content was exposed.

Who is Shikha Maitreya, Kunwari Begum?

According to the police, Shikha Maitreya or Kunwari Begum is a graduate of the National Institute of Fashion Technology (NIFT) in Delhi and was working in a company in Delhi. As soon as she realized that the police might take action against her, she first changed the settings of all her videos from public to private. Following this, she deleted the objectionable videos one by one. After doing all this, she deactivated all her social media profiles. However, some of her videos are still being shared on social media. The police are likely to also interrogate her family members in this case. They have stated that they are in talks with Google officials to permanently remove these videos.

What Kind of Videos Did Shikha Maitreya Make on YouTube?

Shikha Matrey created a YouTube channel called 'Kunwari Begum.' Through her videos, she encouraged people to engage in sexual acts. In one such video, Shikha incited people to commit vile acts with newborns. Besides YouTube, Shikha also had an account on Instagram under the same name. She had 2,050 subscribers on YouTube and had uploaded 115 videos. However, she deleted her objectionable videos before her arrest.