Extortion victims helped gang land govt contracts: Cops
POLICE SAID THE ACCUSED WILL ALSO BE BOOKED FOR HUMAN TRAFFICKING. EVIDENCE SUGGESTED THE GANG ENGAGED SEVERAL WOMEN TO TARGET ‘THOSE IN POWER’
BHOPAL: A special investigation team (SIT) formed by the Madhya Pradesh police is looking at around 1,000 videos stored in the phones of racketeers who extorted money from influential people in a honey trapping network the police believe is spread across three states -- MP, Chhattisgarh and Maharashtra.
Members of the gang also received key government contracts with the help of the around 50 extortion victims, who included politicians and bureaucrats they had snared into indiscreet sexual affairs, the police said.the racketeers also lured young women whom they used to honey-trap the men.
The racket came to light last week with the arrest of six suspects including five women. Indore police identified the suspects as Aarti Dayal, 29, Shweta Swapnil Jain, 39,Barkha Soni Bhatnagar,34, and Omprakash Kori, 45 all from Bhopal; Monica Yadav, 18, from Rajgarh; and Shweta Vijay Jain, 48, from Sagar.
“Aarti Dayal, one of the accused, and Abhishek came to our village and convinced us that they would bear all the expenses of my daughter’s education and help her get a government job,” said Hira Lal Yadav, whose daughter Monica has filed a separate case. In her complaint, Monica has claimed that she was snared into the scandal with the promise of a government job.
Lal claimed that his daughter had told him that Dayal and others had lured many young women on the pretext of providing them government jobs and forced them to honey trap influential people.
“My daughter told me to inform villagers not to send their daughters with Dayal as she was not a good person,” he claimed.
Senior superintendent of police, Indore, Ruchi Vardhan Mishra said the racketeers will also be booked for human trafficking.
SIT took over the investigation on Wednesday from Indore Police, which had received a complaint from Indore Municipal Corporation engineer Harbhajan Singh, who accused the gang members of blackmailing him and demanding Rs 3 crore.
Mishra said the accused hadn’t been cooperating in the investigation.dayal often fainted, which made her interrogation difficult, she said
An SIT officer familiar with the investigation said the evidence gathered so far suggested that this gang engaged several other women to target those in “positions of power.”
The officer said the SIT will investigate the spread of the racket to states such as Chhattisgarh and Maharashtra.
The SIT officer quoted above said on condition of anonymity that the gang blackmailed influential persons to procure contracts for non-government organizations they were running from Bhopal, and for their relatives.