A special investigation team (SIT) has started a probe into a high profile sex scandal, with the alleged involvement of several politicians from both the BJP and the Congress as well as of senior IAS and IPS officials. The scandal has taken Madhya Pradesh by storm.
The SIT, headed by Sanjeev Shami, the Additional Director General (ADG) of Police, will look into all possible angles of the scandal, including the kind of benefits being given to the women who allegedly honey-trapped influential people and got big government contracts and other work done.
The involvement of some journalists, apart from politicians and bureaucrats of neighbouring Chhattisgarh as well as Maharashtra, has also been alleged.
The scandal broke on September 18, when the Indore police arrested five women and a man, after a complaint of an attempt to extort three crore rupees from a sub-engineer of Indore Municipal Corporation. While two women and a driver were arrested from Indore, three other women were arrested from posh localities in Bhopal where they were maintaining a high-profile lifestyle.
Senior Superintendent of Police of Indore, Ruchi Vardhan Mishra, had told media persons that the arrests were on the basis of one complaint of blackmail and extortion against the women and that more cases would be registered if other complainants were to come forward.
But, soon the matter took political colour as at least two of the accused women are said to be linked to major political parties. While one of the accused is said to be a former office bearer of the BJP, the husband of another accused is said to be an ex-office bearer of the Congress IT cell.
Allegations and counter allegations flew between the two political parties and finally the state government decided to constitute an SIT to probe the matter in detail. Senior BJP leaders, including national general secretary Kailash Vijayvargiya, have demanded a CBI probe into the issue. Congress leader Digvijaya Singh hit back saying that the BJP was trying to whitewash the investigation by demanding a probe by the central agency.
While the women from Bhopal and the driver were sent to judicial custody by the court, the other two women arrested from Indore have been remanded to police custody and the police are taking them to different places, including hotels and clubs in different cities, to find the details of their modus operandi.
The Initial probe suggests that the women would contact the influential people on the pretext of getting government contracts and the aid of NGOs that they run. They would then trap them by chatting with them through social media and would then meet them in privacy. Spy cameras or normal mobile phones are then used to capture videos of their rendezvous which is then used to blackmail the people, to either extort money or take other benefits from them.
Sources said that hundreds of videos and screenshots of social media chats and audio files have been recovered from the gadgets seized from the arrested persons. Using these as basis, said sources, it would be probed as to which of the influential persons seen or heard in these digital files were involved in benefitting the arrested women or their accomplices.
Meanwhile, on the complaint of the one of the arrested women, who is an 18-year-old student, police have registered an FIR of human trafficking against the other arrested accused, as they allegedly lured the girl on the pretext of giving her a good job, but then used her in the sex racket.
