MP honeytrap mastermind launched IT, realty firms with extortion money

Bhopal: Strong evidence in the Madhya Pradesh honeytrap scandal suggests that huge amounts, running into several crores, were pocketed by the two women, who blackmailed a bunch of powerful bureaucrats and politicians in the state.

Shweta Jain, the lynchpin of the honeytrap racket, floated two private limited companies in a short span of six months, this year, to run a corporate-style business out of the money extorted from bureaucrats, ministers and MLAs. In one of the companies, accused Aarti Dayal, who coerced college-going girls to bed with VIPs, is a director, while Shweta holds the post of managing director.

The Special Investigation Team (SIT) of the MP Police, investigating one of the biggest sex scandals in the country, revealed that on January 19 this year, Shweta floated a real estate and construction company, Deepthimantham Enterprise Pvt Limited to enter into big construction projects, patronised by a few IAS officers.

Six months later, on July 26, she launched another company to corner contracts relating to software and computer hardware. This was Mingo Technology Private Limited and it was registered at J-394 New Minal Residency, JK Road, Bhopal. This was the place where Shweta had shot videos of several IAS officers and ministers of MP government in a compromising position. While Aarti was appointed director, Shweta became the managing director of this tech company.

Besides, she also owned an electric and thermal insulation product manufacturing unit in Bhopal. The electric and thermal product unit was launched in April 2015.

She was eyeing contracts from the Madhya Pradesh government relating to the supply of thermal insulation tape and other kinds of electric products.

Shweta’s friend and accomplice in the sex scandal, Barkha Soni ran an NGO, Samarth Samajik Seva Sanstha Samiti, to secure funds generated from the honey-trap racket. While Shweta hobnobbed with the state BJP leaders, Barkha was a frequent visitor at the Congress Headquarters in New Delhi and her Facebook wall is full of her pictures with prominent faces of the party.

Sources said Shweta recorded all her phone calls to blackmail IAS, IPS officers and over a dozen leading state politicians with the recordings later. Most of the call recordings in her mobile phones were not deleted by the time police swooped down on her house in Minal Residency, in Bhopal. The late night calls, either relate to vulgar sex chats or about seeking favours from the VIPs holding important government positions.

A senior SIT official told IANS that the investigation team is in the process of identifying people seen in the video recordings or heard in the phone conversations. “At the moment we are busy identifying the officials, who took sexual favours from Shweta in lieu of granting funds to her NGO or contracts to her companies. The process will take some more days. Once an officer or a politician is identified through forensic examination, we will get his voice sample matched with the sex chats and talks about granting favours,” said the official.

SIT sources said Shweta also hired some top call girls from New Delhi to oblige IPS officers at a guest house of the MP Police in Ghaziabad. “It seems the Ghaziabad police guest house was a more secluded place for officers in MP. But we still require solid evidence to prove that the guest house was misused,” a source added.

Two days ago, SIT chief Sanjeev Shami had a long closed-door meeting with MP Chief Minister Kamal Nath on the progress made by the SIT in the ongoing probe. Shami later told mediapersons that his team was probing the corruption angle. “If people misused their official positions to grant favours to the sex scandal operators, the SIT will certainly take action,” he said.

Published on: Sep 28, 2019 at 11:00 IST

IANS