RAIPUR: A day after senior journalist Vinod Verma for allegedly trying to blackmail a minister with a sex CD, the Chhattisgarh cabinet on Saturday decided to ask for a probe by the CBI.
"The state government believes there is a political conspiracy to entangle the minister is a sex-tape controvesy to tarnish the image of the BJP. From the beginning our party has maintained it's a fake sex tape. A CBI inquiry will now unravel the truth", senior minister Prem Prakash Pandey told New Indian Express.
Vinod Verma, a former BBC Hindi journalist and a member of the Editors Guild of India, was arrested in Ghaziabad on Friday for allegedly printing copies of a sex tape and trying to blackmail a senior minister in the Chhattirsarh government.
Following the arrest, a news agency reported that the minister Rajesh Munat on Friday filed a complaint against Vinod Verma and Chhattisgarh Congress chief Bhupesh Baghel for allegedly conspiring to circulate the "fake" sex CD.
Munat, considered close to chief minister Raman Singh, was accompanied by state BJP president Dharam Lal Kaushik and over half a dozen cabinet and party colleagues to the Civil Lines police station in Raipur to file the case under Section 67 (A) of the Information Technology Act, station house officer (SHO) Hem Prakash Nayak told PTI.
"A copy of the CD has been submitted to the police station and it will be sent for a forensic examination," he said.
Congress leader Baghel said the "The incriminating CD was in circulation for the past few days. We too demanded a CBI investigation into it."
Verma has contended that he has been framed by the Chhattisgarh police.
Munat has said that the CD in question was fake and urged the chief minister to order a probe to find the truth. "The CD is fake. It is an attempt to malign my image," he said on Friday.