BHOPAL: A middle-aged woman whose arrest led to the busting of an alleged honey-trap racket in Madhya Pradesh’s Bhind district has turned out to be an HIV/AIDS patient, police said.
On May 23, the woman, while claiming that she was suffering from acute pain in the legs, requested a 60-year-old farmer in Bhind to drop her home. The farmer did it. While thanking him for the help, she requested the man to come into her house for tea. She then allegedly honey-trapped him and later started threatening to use the obscene/objectionable videos for implicating him in a false rape case.
She along with other members of the racket demanded Rs 7 lakh from the farmer, failing which they said they would destroy his life. The farmer gave them Rs 5,000, but they demanded more, after which he was preparing to sell his land.
He, however, later reported the matter to police, after which the woman was arrested. When she was taken to Bhind government hospital for medical examination, it was found that she was HIV positive and under antiretroviral therapy (ART) for the last 3 years, police said.
Based on the woman’s questioning, three other operatives of the racket—two men and a woman—were arrested. Analysis of their mobiles and laptop revealed obscene/objectionable videos of 15-16 men, who are suspected to have been honey-trapped.
“Probe suggests that 6-7 men seen in the videos could have come in physical contact with the HIV-positive woman. We’re now trying to identify those men, after which they would be tested for the possibility of having contracted HIV/AIDS infection,” Bhind SP Suraj Verma told this newspaper.