A 38-year-old Citibank business manager, with the name Balachandran Kavungalparambath, has bagged a 15 months jail sentence after he was nabbed trying to meet a 14-year-old girl for sex after grooming her online.
The man, who is married and is father of one, broke down in tears and claimed he just wanted to have lunch with the youngster as extracts of his warped Whatsapp conversations were read back to him, reportedly traveled more than 100 miles from his home but was met by the ‘Internet Interceptors’ group, who had been posing as the underage girl.
Balachandran was also placed on the sex offender register for 10 years and given a 10-year sexual harm prevention order, as the footage, which runs over an hour, starts with the defendant, who worked in Canary Wharf in east London, being cornered by three members of the group who recovered a perfume and condoms from him after he emptied his rucksack.
After his captors told him the girl in question doesn’t exist, he claimed the girl told him that she was 18 but later admitted that the ‘girl’ told him that she was 14.
He said:
“She told me…whoever the person was that spoke to me spoke to me that she had a desire and she wanted to have sex, but that was not my intention and I had chatted with her.”When asked what would happen to him as punishment, he said: “I will have to leave the country. I am from India. I lose my job, I have to leave the country.”
Fighting back tears, Kavungalparambath, of Blackwall, east London, says:
“I have heard about this. I heard about these groups.
“But as I said, I was supposed to have a chat with her, it was not with the intention of getting her into a bed and having sex with her.
“That was not my intention.”He added: “It’s not right. I accept my mistake.”
