BENGALURU: The mystery woman seen in the sleazy video with now-resigned Water Resources Minister Ramesh Jarkiholi had been visiting his chambers at Vidhana Soudha for the last at least eight months, officials told The New Indian Express. She had also, on many occasions, interacted with the staff at Soudha claiming to be a film-maker interested in bringing out a documentary on the state reservoirs. She had told them that she wanted to use drones to shoot the docu-films and wanted necessary clearances as unmanned aerial vehicles or not allowed at these protected sites.
Ramesh had introduced her to several officers at the Water Resources Department and had told them to assist her with inputs to make the documentary. She and Ramesh had been sighted outside Bengaluru too. Highly-placed sources said the narrative that she was a poor job-seeker who was exploited by Jarkiholi is not true as facts suggest otherwise.
“The video, though came out in the open on Tuesday, was uploaded on social media sites from some foreign destination, not India, a few days ago. How can a poor job-seeker do it? The hidden camera used to film the sexcapade appears to be of high quality and costs upwards of Rs 2 lakh. It has also been placed by an expert with a good knowledge of camera. Again, may not be the plan of a poor, hapless woman. The material has been flawlessly edited and the total raw footage could be at least three to four times the final edited version that was released. Editing too requires money,” they said.
Whodunnit
While there is still no clarity as to who is behind the honeytrap, it is obvious from the video that the woman knew Jarkiholi intimately and addresses him in ‘singular’ in the video. The woman does not seem to have been threatened to get into the sexual act, as is evident from the clip, experts said. While some suspected that it could be the handiwork of someone from opposition parties, others did not rule out the possibility of Jarkiholi’s ‘powerful’ enemies within the BJP hatching the plot to finish him off politically. Only people with some clout could have executed the release of the video to perfection and managed the presence of news mediapersons at the Bengaluru Police Commissioner’s office at that precise moment.
Sources said CCTV records at Soudha and phone call records are proof that Jarkiholi and the woman had a long association. Jarkiholi did not have WhatsApp on his mobile phone and picked up another phone with WhatsApp that was available exclusively to this woman, they said. An officer remembers that the woman had introduced three men as her colleagues. Now, the hunt is on to trace them. The sources said that the two grew intimate during the Covid pandemic last year, and had video phone calls on several occasions.