Infopark honey trap case: IT company owner, three others booked

The Infopark honey trap case, in which a couple was recently arrested over allegations of attempting to extort crores of rupees from the owner of an IT company, has taken a twist, with police registering a sexual harassment case against the owner based on the complaint of the accused woman.

Police registered the case on Tuesday against Venu Gopalakrishnan, the owner of the IT company in Kochi's Infopark, and three others after recording the woman's statement, which took several hours and continued until midnight on Monday.

Investigators said various non-bailable sections of the BNS have been invoked, including Section 74 (assault or use of criminal force against a woman with the intent to outrage her modesty), Section 75 (sexual harassment), Section 79 (insult to a woman's modesty), Section 3(5) (criminal act committed by several persons in furtherance of the common intention of all) and Section 351(2) (criminal intimidation).

A section of the Information Technology Act has also been applied against the accused, they said, adding that the alleged incidents occurred between February last year and July this year.

''We are yet to summon the accused. An investigation is under way and we need to verify the details of the complaint,'' a senior police officer told PTI.

Later in the day, the complainant, while speaking to a TV channel, made serious allegations against Gopalakrishnan, her former employer.

She accused him of ''implicating her and her husband in the honey trap case after she warned him that she would report the harassment she had suffered at the workplace to the company's internal grievance redressal cell''.

Neither Gopalakrishnan nor the other accused have responded to the allegations so far.

Police, last week, had arrested the woman and her husband of trying to extort Rs 30 crore from Gopalakrishnan by threatening to tarnish his reputation and implicate him in a false rape case.

According to police, she and her husband, Krishna Raj, had spread rumours that she had an illicit relationship with the IT company owner.

They then allegedly warned they would lodge a rape complaint against him unless he paid them.

A team led by Central ACP Siby Tom arrested the couple and recovered the Rs 20 crore cheque leaf and agreement papers from them, police had said.

(This story has not been edited by Devdiscourse staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)