Karnataka's Central Crime Branch has unearthed a significant honey trap racket that specialized in ensnaring notable figures of the state and extorting large sums of money through blackmail. The racket involved extracting millions of rupees from their victims. Two individuals, Santosh and Puttaraju of Mysore, have been arrested in connection to this case. A female accomplice of the racket has also been detained, though her identity remains undisclosed.
Following a complaint by the current MLA of Mysore's Chamaraja constituency, Harish Gowda, police initiated the probe into this honey trap racket. MLA Harish Gowda informed the CCB that the gang had blackmailed him, demanding crores of rupees. This highly influential group specifically targeted prominent figures, keeping tabs on their every movement.
They meticulously gathered information about their targets' whereabouts, even down to which hotels and rooms they were staying in. After their targets checked out, they would book the same rooms and install spy cameras. This set the stage for their honey trapping game, where a woman would bait VIPs into a snare of intimacy.
During the hotel room encounters, the perpetrators would record everything with hidden cameras and then start blackmailing their victims. They would threaten to share explicit videos on social media unless a hefty sum was paid. The victims ranged from university chancellors to politicians and officials.
It is worth mentioning that last year, Karnataka police also exposed another large honey trap gang that wooed their targets via social media. They would persuade victims to meet and subsequently engage in sexual relations while their accomplices filmed the acts.
A victim of the honey trap revealed that he met a woman named Neha on Telegram. After several conversations, Neha invited him to a house. They became physically intimate, and during this time, the accused filmed explicit videos of him. The perpetrators blackmailed the victim, demanding money.
