SINGAPORE, Dec 9 — A former primary school teacher has been sentenced to two weeks’ jail by a district court today for possessing 7,786 obscene videos of which 131 included child pornographic content.

Loh Wei Qi, a 36-year-old Singaporean, pleaded guilty to a single charge related to the possession of the videos, while another charge related to the distribution of obscene videos was taken into consideration for his sentencing.

The court heard that Loh’s offences were uncovered on April 16, 2019 when the Singapore police received a tip-off from the branch of the International Criminal Police Organisation (Interpol) in Ottawa, Canada.

Interpol said that a Singapore internet protocol (IP) address had been linked to a possible transmission of child sexual abuse material through the mobile messaging application "Kik”.

Loh was arrested on April 22 by the Singapore police through follow-up investigations.

Court documents stated that prior to his arrest, Loh was working as a teacher at Park View Primary School. He resigned from his job in July 2021.

Investigations revealed that Loh started downloading the obscene videos sometime in 2016 after he came across an anonymous user’s comment on the social networking website Tumblr that stated he would share pornographic content with anyone who added him on the Kik mobile messaging application.

Loh registered for a Kik account and added the anonymous user and he began using the application to share and receive numerous files and videos with pornographic content.

Deputy Public Prosecutor Yvonne Poon said that although the Loh had not deliberately sought out child pornography, he did receive and send out such material.

However, this stopped in December 2018, when Loh found that his Kik account had been suspended and he was unable to log in.

Though he deleted the application, he kept the files he had downloaded on his personal devices.

In addition, he had continued perusing and downloading pornographic materials from other sources, said the prosecutor, who sought a jail term of around three weeks for Loh.

Anyone found guilty of possessing obscene films can be fined up to S$40,000 (RM130,499) or jailed for up to 12 months, or both.

Anyone found guilty of circulating obscene materials can be jailed for up to three months, or fined, or both. — TODAY