Read this story in Nepali: सम्बन्धलाई मोलामोल गरेर पैसा असुल

In recent days, instances of building personal relationships based on mutual acquaintances and then using fabricated allegations to extort money, all the while being privy to the target’s lifestyle and assets, have begun to surface publicly. Apparently, women have been implicated in such schemes, driven by the greed to earn quick money by manipulating intimate relationships.

Incident Number 1

Thirty-five-year-old Krishna Gahatraj, from Gadhawa Rural Municipality -6 in Dang, who is also known as Anushka Singh, and currently living in Tulsipur Sub-Metropolitan City-6, Dashrath Tol, is at present in judicial custody awaiting trial.

Anushka was arrested on December 2, 2022 for repeatedly extorting money from 49-year-old Prem Bahadur Khadka of Tulsipur Sub-Metropolitan City by threatening him that she would level rape allegations against him. The police complaint filed by Prem states that after he refused to comply with her demands, Anushka sent threatening messages to his daughter on her mobile phone. Anushka apparently demanded Rs 50 million and warned Prem’s daughter that she would hire gangsters to have her raped.

The police had also apprehended Ludra Bahadur KC, Krishna Kumari Basnet and Tulsi Ram Bishwakarma and filed a case against them for helping Anushka. However, the District Court in Dang remanded Anushka to judicial custody and the other three individuals were released on a bond of Rs 1,00,000 each.

As per the investigation conducted by the police, the perpetrators of this crime had already extorted Rs three million from Prem. In his complaint, Prem has mentioned that initially he was scared of the social ramifications so he complied with Anushka’s demands. However, in the following days the demands that Anushka was making kept getting bigger and he refused to provide any more money to Anushka. According to the then Spokesperson DSP Rajan Kumar Gautam of the District Police Office, Dang, the police caught Anushka while she was demanding the remaining money that she had bargained for with Prem.

Incident Number 2

Sharmila Nepali, a neighbor who is in good terms with Dinesh Gharti Magar of Ghorahi Sub-Metropolitan City – 10, calls and asks him to come to her home on August 10, 2022. Sharmila calls Dinesh early in the morning and informs him that there will be nobody at her home that night and she will be all alone. After getting the call from Sharmila, Dinesh goes to her place that night.

In his complaint lodged at the District Police Office in Dang, Dinesh has stated that he had gone to Sharmila’s house as she had called him in the morning saying that nobody else would be at home that night and had invited him. He has further mentioned that the two of them were sitting down when all of a sudden there were loud knocks on the door and six of Sharmila’s friends and family members entered the house and started assaulting him. Dinesh has also stated that they had threatened him that they would file a rape case against him and ruin his life.

Dinesh was so scared he was willing to do whatever they compelled him to do. Since it would take quite some time to transfer the land ownership deed, they started asking him for money and he had already given Rs 1,120,000 over a period of time. Dinesh had paid the money in cash and in checks. He approached the police only after he had given them all the money he had with him. Based on Dinesh’s complaint, the police apprehended the culprits and filed a case against them and presented them at the court.

As per the order issued by the District Court in Dang on September 8, 2022, Shanta Nepali, Bimala Dangi and Pavitra Dangi of Ghorahi-10, have been released from judicial custody on a bond of Rs 100,000 each. However, Shanta Nepali, also known as Puja, was not able to pay the bond money and was remanded in judicial custody.

Meanwhile, Dileep Bahadur Wali of Ghorahi-14 and Pramila Nepali of Ghorahi-10, who is also known as Sharmila, could not pay the bail amount of Rs 5,00,000 and are in judicial custody, according to the District Police Office in Dang. 

Incident Number 3

Sita Devi Thapa of Swargadwari Municipality in Pyuthan, Khuma Wali of Ghorahi-1 Simaltara and Sushma Pariyar of Ghorahi-5 Dharna met a lawyer and asked him to fight a case for them that was related to property partition. All three of them currently reside in Ghorahi-15.

They invited the lawyer to a hotel telling him they need to hold discussions regarding the case. The three women then filed a case against the lawyer alleging that he had tried to rape them.

In the police complaint filed by the lawyer, he has stated that they called him to a hotel telling him that since he was a lawyer and had knowledge on legal matters, they needed to talk to him about a case related to property partition. He has also mentioned that they sat in one of the cabins in the hotel and he explained about the legal issues to them. In the meantime, they were also drinking beer and eating food. The lawyer has also stated that as they started talking about the case it got dark and night had set in. Sita Devi decided to lie down on a couch bed. “I had already paid the bill at the hotel counter and the two other women had already gone outside but Sita Devi was still lying on the bed. As I approached her to wake her up, she suddenly rose and started walking outside the hotel, all the while screaming that I had tried to molest her and she would file a rape case against me,” the lawyer has stated in his complaint.

According to the police complaint, Khuma Wali informed the lawyer that Sita was about to file a rape case against him and called him for talks. “Fearing for my reputation I went to the hotel they called me to. All three of them were there in the hotel and as we spoke they told me that if I paid Rs five million then Sita would not file a case against me,” the lawyer has written in his complaint, adding, “I immediately gave them the Rs 1,00,000 I had with me and also gave them a check for Rs 1.7 million.”

As the lawyer was not able to pay within the stipulated time they started continuously threatening and asking him for money. They kept threatening him that they would hire goons to extort the money from him. Finally, the lawyer approached the police on September 18, 2021 and lodged a complaint against the three women. The police apprehended the women and registered a case against them under fraud, betrayal and criminal gains at the District Court in Dang on October 5, 2021. The court found all three women guilty and imposed fines on them.

In the previous years, cases related to honey trap, which basically means getting close to a male under various pretexts, pretending that the concerned woman is in love with that man and even having a sexual relationship, and then using that as a basis to extort hefty sums of money, were not made public. However, one such complaint was lodged at the District Court in Dang fiscal year 2078/79, and in the fiscal year 2079/80, two such honey trap cases were registered.

The police have already filed a case under criminal gains against all the three accused at the District Court in Dang. The then registrar of the District Court in Dang, Hiranya Prasad Bhandari, says, “Till date there have been three such cases in Dang whereby victims have been honey trapped for financial gains. Such cases were not made public previously because the victims did not want the incident to tarnish their image and reputation.”

Bhandari said that such cases are becoming more public in recent days, as those setting such traps demand very large sums of money and also because the victim can no longer afford to fulfill the demand made by the criminals.

The then Spokesperson of District Police Office in Dang, DSP Rajan Kumar Gautam, shared that as long as the going is easy the victims do not talk about such incidents and approach the police for help only when they can bear it no longer.     

Such incidents are not confined to Dang. SP Nawaraj Adhikari of Kathmandu Police Circle reveals that incidents whereby women have bargained to extort money from men due to their fear of being socially ostracized occur in Kathmandu too. He states that people who have a big reputation and social standing usually fall prey to bargaining.

The laws that have been drafted to protect the rights of women are being misused in such incidents where women exploit men’s social standing for financial gain. Kripasur Karki, a judge at the District Court in Dang, said that structures meant to aid victims are sometimes manipulated by unscrupulous individuals. “These people establish relationships under false pretenses and later exploit those connections for financial benefits,” he added. He stated that due to the rise in such incidents in the coming days genuine victims will be in problem and there might come a situation where they might not be able to receive justice.

Someone I considered a sister betrayed me

The lawyer, who is mentioned in Incident 3, revealed that Khuma Wali, who is now in judicial custody, worked for a nongovernment organization. The organization that Khuma worked for helps people with divorces, settlements and property claims, among others.

The lawyer claims he knows Khuma very well and they were like family. He treated her like a sister. The lawyer explains that Khuma had planned to trap him and had used the other two women for the purpose. He said that initially the women were asking for five million rupees but had later settled for 1.8 million rupees.

The lawyer admits he was scared that if the incident became public it would tarnish his reputation and also send a wrong message to the place he worked for and hence had decided to give them money to settle the issue. “Since I had not done anything wrong, I was not so scared,” he said, adding, “But I decided to settle the issue with them for fear that I would lose my reputation.”

However, the lawyer said he soon felt he had been wronged against and lodged the complaint at the District Police Office in Dang to seek a legal remedy. He adds that he gathered a lot of courage to approach the police. “There are many such incidents in Dang. There are lots of women who target rich men and then extort money out of them.”

The Desire to Become Rich

There has been a rise in the number of people who have a mindset that they have to become rich no matter to what extent they have to go to. There are fundamental rules and policies in place to protect women’s rights. But there are so many women who misuse the laws designed to protect them. They develop a relationship with some men and later use that relationship for financial gains. The three incidents mentioned above make the issue clearer.

It can be seen that the perpetrators of such crimes kept extorting money from the victims after having received the first payment. If you scrutinize all the three incidents you will realize that most of the culprits were exposed and caught because they were not satisfied with the initial amount they were paid and kept asking for more money.   

With regard to Incident Number 1, Prem signed an agreement with the concerned women which states that the woman would no longer blackmail or bargain with him under false rape allegations. It was also learnt that even after the agreement was signed the women had threatened Prem they would file another case dealing with racism against him and had tried to extort money from him. In the complaint lodged by Prem, he has mentioned, “We had signed a legal paper where it was clearly mentioned that they would no longer bargain and extort money from me under any pretext. I was finally at peace then but Anushka again went to one of my relatives and asked that relative to tell me to meet her or else she would file a case of racism and rape against me.”

Prem has mentioned in his complaint that Anushka wanted to buy a property in Ghorahi and build a house there for which she demanded more money from Prem. In fact, Prem had already given her a check of Rs. 2,00,000.

According to Navraj Subedi, Professor of Sociology at Mahendra Multiple Campus, which is affiliated with Tribhuvan University, criminal incidents like honey traps arise from the misguided notion of amassing wealth through bargaining and intimidation. He emphasized the need for effective law enforcement to prevent such crimes, stating that robust implementation of the law will deter wrongdoing. Furthermore, he advocates against actions that disrupt social harmony.

Of regrets…

Registrar Niranjan Babu Pandey informed that the court had found Sita Devi, Khuma and Sushma, who were mentioned in the first incident, guilty and had sentenced them. On December 18, 2023, the bench of District Judge Jagat Bahadur Poudel ordered all of them to pay a fine of Rs. 15,000 each and Rs. 10,000 each in compensation. The court also sentenced them to 1.5 years of jail. Prior to that, they had been released on bail.

The lawyer had fallen victim to a honey trap that was set up by Sita Devi Thapa. Having divorced her husband, she had meticulously gathered information about the lawyer while preparing her case documents. Khuma also had a lot of information on the lawyer.

Even Khuma knew the lawyer very well. Sita and Khuma had devised a plan together to trap the lawyer. Sita Devi acknowledges that even though she was aware that it was a wrong thing to do she decided to commit that mistake with her friends. “Right now, I am regretting my actions. The law did not forgive me, I am bearing the consequences,” she sighs. 

What is a honey trap?

The term ‘honey trap’ is derived from two English words – ‘honey’ and ‘trap’. A honey trap involves enticing someone into a snare using something as sweet as honey.

In practice, a honey trap occurs when a man or woman gradually establishes relationship with another person, gaining insight into their behavior and assessing their assets. Subsequently, they negotiate for financial gain.

SP Navraj Adhikari from Kathmandu Police Circle defines honey trap as the deliberate entrapment of individuals who hold social and economic standing.

Based on the incident in Dang, it appears that women leverage their physical attractiveness to ensnare men. Notably, individuals engaged in significant business ventures or occupying high positions are often susceptible to this allure.

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