After Madhya Pradesh, Crime Branch busts honey-trap racket in Karnataka

Bengaluru: An MLA from north Karnataka helped the state Crime Branch to bust a racket that honey-trapped politicians and businessmen and extorted money from them. Eight members of the gang have been arrested so far as their three-year run fleecing money from several prominent people was stopped as they came under the police radar recently.

The Crime Branch is yet to give out the details of those arrested. The police are on a hunt to find the mastermind behind the racket.

The Crime Branch sleuths arrested them even as they were making the plans to target prominent personalities and make away with crores of rupees.

Two of the arrested are women, as per reports in the national media.

The MLA approached the law enforcers as a recording of his lewd conversation was made public by the gang. The police began the probe after the politician complained that a woman had demanded Rs 25 crore from him.

The police nabbed the 8-member gang on November 26.

The cops said that there is no clarity as to how many people lost money and how much money was lost. The cops are also enquiring if the gang has any links to higher-ups.

Modus Operandi

The gang mainly targeted politicians outside Bengaluru. They would identify the individual and covertly start their operation by first assigning one woman to seduce him. Once he falls for her, the women would become part of his foreign trips. There would also be invitations to guest house and star hotel, where the gang would have already fitted hidden camera.

The intimate moments with the woman would be recorded. They would then send the video to the person and seek crores of rupees. The gang would threaten to circulate the video on social media platforms if not given the money.

The police continued their probe by tracing the phone messages and spoke with some of the members of the gang over the phone. Using these conversations, the cops tracked five of the gang to Varthur, a suburb of Bengaluru, and arrested them.

A honeytrap racket targeting politicians was exposed in Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh. Attempts were made to extort money from a former chief minister of Madhya Pradesh, former governor, eight ministers and several senior officers by threatening to release their compromising pictures.

The Madhya Pradesh case is considered to be one of the biggest honey-trap rackets in the country. Soon after the revelations about the Madhya Pradesh racket, a similar racket came to light in Bengaluru.