Student's porn charges

Shakthinidhi Karananidi. Photo / Facebook

A 20-year-old Malaysian student is facing 48 charges related to objectionable material - including child pornography - and has been ordered to surrender his passport.

Shakthinidhi Karananidi has been bailed to a multi-storey apartment building in central Auckland which is home to about 800 other university students. His bail conditions state that he must not access the internet.

He appeared in Auckland District Court on Thursday facing a raft of charges alleging he supplied or distributed, exported and possessed objectionable publications.

Most of the computer files the charges relate to were image files that had been given a number, but others had names such as babymario13.jpg and babysitting03.jpg. Other file names were too explicit to print.

Karananidi is due to appear in court again on June 14.

The Herald on Sunday has not been able to contact Karananidi. However, the offences he has been charged with stand in contrast to his online persona of an overseas student, sometimes homesick but enjoying life, making new friends and getting to know his new country.

His blog reveals The Big Bang Theory is one of his favourite shows. He writes of how happy he was that his friends threw him a surprise birthday party last year. In the cold Kiwi winter, he missed the climate of his Malaysian homeland.

The charges were brought by the NZ Customs Service and came the same week as the Department of Internal Affairs announced an unrelated global child pornography operation, code-named Operation Laminar.

Fifty-five suspects were arrested in 20 countries accused of involvement in the worldwide distribution of child sexual abuse images. Some also face charges of sexually abusing the children. Authorities rescued 12 children and babies, including one child in New Zealand.

Operation Laminar was initiated after the Internal Affairs censorship unit discovered social media such as Facebook was being used to share images.

None of the 55 key suspects were from this country but five people were charged with lesser offences.