A BOLTON man was caught with hundreds of thousands of indecent images of children and seven copies of a manual for paedophiles, a court heard.

When police arrested Naveed Ishaq, 48, after finding him with the foul stash, he told officers he had been planning to show it to them as he wanted to show how easy it is to obtain the material.

Bolton Crown Court was told Ishaq was the subject of an investigation by the National Crime Agency after he had used e-mail addresses to register with a website based in New Zealand.

Greater Manchester Police was made aware of this and his home on Langthorne Walk in Deane was visited last August.

Police recovered multiple devices and Ishaq made up a desperate lie to cover his tracks.

Peter Connick, prosecuting, told the court: “He said he had been wanting to contact the police for some time to talk about the fact you can get such things on the internet.”

Ishaq also told police there were further devices at his home hidden under a sofa bed.

In total police found 31,307 category A images, the most serious level, 29,256 category B images and 327,531 category C ones on his devices.

He also had possession of 481 prohibited images of children and 47 images depicting sex between humans and animals.

Mr Connick gave examples to the court of the vile content found in Ishaq’s possession.

He said the indecent images contained videos and still pictures with victims as young as two who “appear to be in distress and severe pain.”

The paedophile manual, entitled ‘How to Practice Child Love’, was 170 pages in length and had been downloaded seven times.

Ishaq appeared in court to be sentenced after admitting to having a paedophile manual and three counts of making indecent images.

He also pleaded guilty to possession of indecent images of children and possession of extreme pornography depicting human intercourse with animals between May 2017 and August last year.

Keith Harrison, defending, said his client no longer stood by what he said to the police.

He said: “He doesn’t persist in the desperate explanation presented that he was researching matters to bring them to the attention of the police.”

He added that Ishaq had pleaded guilty, had drawn the police to the attention of more incriminating material and had no previous convictions.

The Honorary Recorder of Bolton, Judge Martin Walsh said a prison sentence was inevitable.

He said: “The amount of material here is grotesque.”

He added there were “aggravating features” including “the age of the children, the high volume of material that was downloaded and in particular the period of time of which the material was collected”.

He jailed Ishaq for two years and placed him on the sex offenders’ register for 10 years.