A search was carried out after the concerned picture went viral, police said (File)
A picture of the alleged kingpin of a high-profile extortion racket, Shweta Vijay Jain, talking with a senior police official, KK Kulshreshtha, in the female ward of the Indore District Jail - that recently was viral on the Internet - has exposed the security of the jail in which all five accused of the case are presently lodged. The jail authorities have launched a probe into the matter.
DIG Jail, Sanjay Pandey, conducted detailed inspection and search of the Indore District Jail premises on Thursday, with particular focus on the female ward which houses three barracks having 80-plus women inmates.
"The search was carried out after the concerned picture went viral, but nothing incriminating or objectionable was found. Indore Central Jail Superintendent Rakesh Kumar Bhangre has been asked to probe in a week how the photos were clicked inside the prison and submit a report," he said.
The sensational extortion racket - unearthed last year - involved a dozen top bureaucrats and eight former ministers of Madhya Pradesh and over 1,000 clips of sex chats, explicit videos and audios had left behind a money trail. Those running the operation, who had been in contact with powerful men in corridors of power in Madhya Pradesh for around a decade, had earned large sums of money as commission through transfers and postings in the state, sources had told NDTV.
Two of the women involved in the scandal - Sweta Vijay Jain and Barkha Soni Bhatnagar - who reportedly had key political contacts in both BJP and the Congress were at the forefront of all major business deals, sources said.
Known as the "honey-trap" scandal, the racket had targeted mainly politicians and bureaucrats and involved five women who used sex workers and young college girls, the police say. More than 200 mobile phone contacts had been uncovered in raids.