Bhopal: A former MP Cabinet Minister had to resign following a 'sting operation' by the honey-trap syndicate in 2016. After watching the two-minute video, authenticated by forensic experts, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) central leadership paved the way for his ouster from the government.
Now, videos of two other Ministers in the erstwhile Shivraj Singh Chouhan government, have been authenticated by the special investigation team (SIT) of the MP Police, probing one of the biggest sex & blackmail scandals in the state.
The SIT is also probing the role of a Delhi-based Hindi television journalist for allegedly negotiating extortion deals with victims on behalf of the honey-trap syndicate.
MP Chief Minister Kamal Nath, who is personally monitoring the investigation into the honey-trap sleaze that has rattled the upper echelons of power in the state, has assured that investigation will not be a political witch-hunt.
The help of the best forensic and cyber experts has been sought to identify the 'targets' who succumbed to the blackmail and obliged the accused by granting lucrative government contracts and huge funds from the social sector schemes.
The video of the former Minister in the Chouhan government, purportedly shown in the compromising position, was recorded using a high quality hidden camera fitted with a microphone. The woman, shown in the video footage with clear audio, has reportedly been identified by lynch-pin Shweta Jain as one of her aides.
42-second footage of the Minister has gone viral in MP, causing panic in the state secretariat corridors. Names of several serving bureaucrats to have cropped up in the scandal.
In some cases, phone calls and sex chats of 'targets' were recorded through the help of a Bengaluru-based tech company. Several VIPs 'in action' were video-graphed at a private guest house and a flat in a posh locality of Bhopal, owned by Shweta Vijay Jain.
On the involvement in the sleaze of politicians, mostly belonging to the BJP, party General Secretary Kailash Vijayvargiya reiterated that the Congress government had launched a witch-hunt to malign his party's image.
Responding to that, Congress spokesperson KK Mishra told IANS investigation was aimed at identifying those who granted lucrative government contracts to a criminal syndicate "in lieu of sexual favours."
"The Congress has requested Kamal Nath for a thorough the probe and exposes everybody, including Congress leaders if involved," said Mishra who initially pointed to the sex scandal.
According to a leading daily published from Indore, the TV reporter who hails from MP is a central government-accredited journalist. The reporter was hand-in-glove with Shweta Jain and was allegedly negotiating extortion amount with an Indore Municipal Corporation engineer, the man who filed an FIR against the syndicate and opened the can of worms and kicked up the stink of sex, sleaze, and blackmail prevailing at the top echelons of the government.
While Shweta Jain's aides identified high-profile 'targets' and honey-trapped them, the TV journalist in Delhi would approach them with the video clips and negotiate the extortion.
According to SIT sources, the team is examining 92 incriminating video clips of former Ministers, IAS and IPS officers. The sleazy footage also included a few Congress MLAs. (IANS)