It is an open season for salacious stories in Madhya Pradesh media ever since the state police arrested politically-connected five women from Bhopal and Indore after busting a sensational sex-and-blackmail racket on September 18.
However, no names of politicians and bureaucrats purportedly involved in the scandal have been exposed by the Special Investigation Team (SIT) which was formed to probe the high-profile honeytrap so far.
Chief Minister Kamal Nath, who is directly monitoring the investigation, reviewed breakthroughs achieved so far in the matter with SIT chief Sanjeev Shami, who is Additional Director General of Police rank officer on Thursday.
Shami says the sex-racket under probe has too widespread ramifications to expose the names of the honey-trapped politicians and bureaucrats so early.
The state government too is in no hurry to reveal the names of the racket’s targets for two reasons. One, the honeytrap has exposed the vulnerability of the BJP as most of the trapped are the party’s leaders. The government wants to keep the Opposition on tenterhooks so that its own stability is not challenged by the opposition. Two, the involvement of bureaucrats may be morally obnoxious but it is legally tenable because the video clips suggest consensual sex between two adults in which neither side has lodged any formal police complaint.
Nevertheless, the racket has massively rocked the political and bureaucratic circles in the state as the police have seized nearly a hundred of high-resolution quality video-clips captured through spy cameras and mobile phones, showing top-notch movers and shakers in a compromising position with call girls. They include former and present ministers, a former chief minister, a governor, sitting and ex-MLAs, IAS and IPS officers and wealthy businessmen, according to SIT sources.
Sources said the racket had been going on for many years. Its masterminds had succeeded in honey-trapping and blackmailing nearly a hundred influential persons.
According to the police, the gang members first got in touch with their targets, befriended them and later asked them to meet in hotel rooms where their associates installed hidden cameras to capture men in a compromising position. These objectionable clips were then used to blackmail them.
The gang members confessed to having extorted Rs 15 crore from 20 of its “victims”.
State intelligence agencies had been keeping a close watch on the women involved in it for years. But, since there were no complaints and no video had gone viral, the intelligence personnel chose not to act, except piling up information about the sleazy goings-on.
Finally, the police swung into action when Indore Municipal Corporation (IMC) chief engineer Harbhajan Singh on September 18 lodged a complaint about being blackmailed by two women. He told the police that the women had secretly recorded his ‘intimate moments’ with a girl and were threatening to make them public if he did not cough up Rs 3 crore.
Following the complaint, Indore SSP Ruchi Vardhan Mishra laid a trap for the blackmailers. The women identified as Arati Dayal (29) and Shweta Swapnil Jain (48) fell in the trap.
Their interrogation led to four more arrests in Bhopal on the same night. They were identified as Monica Yadav (18), Shweta Vijay Jain (39), Barkha Soni (34) and Omprakash Kori (45), all of whom are in jail now. Kori is the driver of the car which the Arati and Shweta rode in to reach Indore from Bhopal before being arrested.