Days after clean chit to IPS officers, five including journalist booked in alleged honeytrap case in Gujarat

Police have arrested two of the accused including a Gandhinagar-based journalist

The Kheda district police in central Gujarat booked five persons including two journalists for falsely associating a woman in an alleged "honeytrap" case involving five IPS officers. Police said that two of the accused, including a journalist, have been arrested. The FIR was registered days after the state government inquiry gave a clean chit to the concerned officers and stated that reports of honeytrap case were "false".

However, according to police, several news web portals and social media users disclosed the identity of the woman who was alleged to be behind the "honeytrap". Police said that five accused and some unknown persons took the woman's pictures from her Facebook profile and claimed that she was behind the "honey trapping" which never happened.

Based on the complaint filed by the woman, in her 30s, Kheda police have registered the FIR against five persons. They have been identified as Vijaysinh Rajput, said to be a journalist based in Gandhinagar, Pradip Raval, who runs a news portal, Janfariad, Barkatulla Khatri, a resident of Bodeli in Chhota Udepur district, Hetal Solanki, a Facebook user and one Ashwin Kamdar from Surat.

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They have been booked for forgery (IPC 469), criminal defamation (IPC 500), and insulting the modesty of a woman (IPC 509), among other charges.

"We have arrested Barkatulla and Raval so far in the case. We are investigating persons who misused her photos," police inspector Priyank Baranda, who is investigating the case, told DH.

Another police officer told DH, "When the woman approached us, she had suicidal tendencies. We had to counsel her a lot. She told us that because of her picture being flashed across social media platforms for so many days, people taunt her as someone behind the incident (honeytrap) which never happened."

In December, the Gujarat police had set up an inquiry after various news reports claimed that five IPS officers were honey-trapped at a police training academy for money. The inquiry gave the concerned officers clean chit and said that no such incident ever occurred.