MP sex racket: police find 1K video clips used to honey trap the rich, powerful

A special investigation team (SIT) of Madhya Pradesh police has recovered 1,000 clips of explicit videos, after busting an alleged sex and extortion racket where meritorious girls were lured and used as honey trap to blackmail politicians and bureaucrats.

Five women who were planning to target politicians, bureaucrats and wealthy people, with the help of sex workers and young girls as honey trap, were arrested on Wednesday (September 25). They have been booked for human trafficking, senior superintendent of police, Indore, Ruchi Vardhan Mishra told the media.

The SIT is currently studying the videos which were found in phones, computer and other devices of members of the sex and extortion racket spread across Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh and Maharashtra.

Police busted the racket in a late night raid on September 18 after Indore’s municipal corporation engineer Harbhajan Singh lodged a complaint, alleging of being blackmailed by Aarti Dayal, one of the members of the gang, who demanded ₹3 crore as extortion money. The SIT took over the case on Wednesday.

It is being said that one of the arrested Shweta Jain, who runs an NGO ran the racket. An NDTV report says she rented the house of a BJP MLA and had close links with politicians in the state. In her interrogation, she has allegedly admitted to trapping at least two dozen college students from poor families, and using them to seduce top officials and politicians, the report said. Police seized laptops, mobile phones, documents and video evidence from Shweta’s house.

An India Today report said the gang had lured seven of the girls used as honey trap from Rajgarh district to Bhopal by promising their parents scholarships for them.

Quoting a source, the report said the gang members has approached the families of the meritorious girls and had planned to force them into flesh trade. Monika Yadav, one among the arrested five, in her statement to police has said that she was trapped into the racket after her videos were discreetly recorded. Police filed a case of human trafficking against the gang members based on the statements of Monika’s father.

While speaking to Hindustan Times, father of one of the trapped girls said that Aarti Dayal along with Abhishek, another gang member visited him in his village and told him that they would bear all the expenses of his daughter’s education and help her get a government job. The man, a farmer said his daughter later told him that Aarti’s gang trapped many other girls in this way and forced them to honey trap influential people.

“My daughter told me to inform villagers not to send their daughter with Dayal as she was not a good person,” HT quoted the farmer as saying.

While Monika, according to the India Today report has identified the politicians and bureaucrats in the videos, Aarti Dayal allegedly feigns illness whenever she is called for interrogation.