Video editor: Sandeep Suman
Nineteen-year-old Priya Chandra* (name changed) belongs to a small village in Madhya Pradesh. On 18 September, she was arrested with four other women – Aarti Dayal, Shweta Vijay Jain, Shweta Swapnil Jain and Barkha Soni, in connection with the curious honey trap scandal which has shaken the Madhya Pradesh government as the investigation has yielded the names of several high-profile BJP and Congress politicians as well as serving IAS and IPS officers.
Priya’s father, a farmer, earns only Rs 6,000 a month, an income too meagre to fund her higher education. He said Priya wanted to continue her further studies in Bhopal and contacted Aarti, one of the accused, on Facebook in April this year, as she believed her NGO might help her out.
Priya’s statement under Section 164 of the IPC has been recorded before the Magistrate which will help her become an approver in the honey trap case. The police has also registered a separate FIR for human trafficking based on Priya’s father’s complaint.
In April 2019, Priya left for Bhopal to stay with Aarti Dayal. Although she visited the village a few times, she didn’t share the truth about her life in Bhopal with her family.
Whenever she visited her home, Priya gave her parents some money. In fact, when her father went to Bhopal once, she told him she helped Aarti with some clerical work in addition to attending college and coaching classes.
The police claims several young girls from poor families were allegedly coerced into prostitution by the gang. Their modus operandi was to get in touch with politicians and bureaucrats, shoot videos of them secretly, either via spy cam or mobile phones, and later, blackmail them for money and other favours.
The police claims to have unearthed many obscene videos on the hard disk and phones seized during the raid at the accused’s premises. Investigation into the matter is underway.
The massive honey trap scandal was busted after an Indore Municipal Corporation engineer approached the police claiming he was being blackmailed to the tune of Rs 3 crore over objectionable video clips shot by the accused.
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