HC SAYS NO FOR CBI PROBE INTO HONEY-TRAP SCANDAL IN MP

The Indore bench of Madhya Pradesh high court on Saturday rejected a petition seeking a probe by Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) into the honey-trapping and blackmailing scandal that surfaced in the state last year.

The scandal came to the fore when the MP police busted a racket involved in honey trapping and then blackmailing several bureaucrats and politicians in the state, in November last year, leading the previous Kamal Nath government to constitute a special investigation team (SIT) to probe the matter.

However, several petitions were filed in the Indore bench seeking a CBI probe into the issue arguing that SIT would not be able to unearth the truth considering the high profile nature of the scandal.

A division bench of the high court dismissed the petitions saying that it was satisfied with the progress of the probe by SIT into the matter and there was no need for a CBI probe into it. The SIT has earlier submitted a report detailing the progress in its probe.

The court, however, ordered the SIT to submit the forensic reports of the electronic evidence gathered in connection with the scandal before it as soon as they were available.

The SIT has recovered 4,000 smut videos, sex chat screenshots, photographs in which the accused were seen in compromising positions with their victims, from the laptops, cell phones and other electronic surveillance gadgets seized from the honey-trap ring that allegedly hooked quite a significant number of movers and shakers in the state.