Investigators have demanded former Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Kamal Nath to bring over the flash drives or CDs of the high-profile 2019 extortion scheme dubbed as the “honey trap” case, which reportedly included numerous former ministers and top officials.
When his party officials asked him about a police case filed against a Congress MLA regarding the death of a 40-year-old lady, the 74-year-old Congress politician sparked outrage by declaring he “still had the pen drive” of the incident, posing an apparent danger to the BJP administration in the state.
Mr. Nath’s comments during a virtual press conference sparked outrage and pushed the scandal back into the spotlight, with the BJP wondering why, if the former chief minister had evidence against any politician or official, he did not take action.
In a letter seen by media, the Special Investigation Team (SIT) that is looking into the issue has urged the Congress politician to give the USB drive or CD by Wednesday.
The shocking “honey trap” incident, which exposed over 1,000 tapes of sex conversations, graphic films, and audio, broke during Kamal Nath’s stint as Chief Minister in 2019 with the arrest of five women from Bhopal.
Investigators described the racket as potentially the country’s “largest quid pro quo sex scandal” at the time, with those behind it reportedly using the films to blackmail politicians and bureaucrats whose identities or political allegiances have not been made public to date.
Shweta Jain, who operated a local NGO and was one of the primary accused in the case, told police that at least two dozen college students, largely from lower-middle-class households, and sex workers were employed to woo prominent officials and politicians.
She allegedly informed investigators that the operation was primarily targeted at obtaining lucrative government contracts worth hundreds of crores from VIPs, while others were involved in extorting large sums from them.
