Bhopal, Jan 28 (IANS): The hearing in the high-profile honey-trapping and blackmailing scandal, that rocked Madhya Pradesh four-and-half-years ago, was deferred to February 10 on Monday as the Special Investigation Team (SIT) failed to submit its report on whether Congress leader Kamal Nath has a ‘pen-drive’ purportedly containing evidence of the case.

Claiming that the new SIT chief Adarsh Katiyar, who took charge recently, was on training in Coimbatore, the team sought some more time to submit the report.

Subsequently, a District Court of Indore fixed February 10 as the next date of hearing.

The court was hearing a petition filed by lawyer Yavar Khan seeking to know how the pen drive related to the sensational case had fallen into the hands of former Chief Minister Kamal Nath.

Khan filed the petition after Nath at a press conference here on May 21, 2021 claimed that he had in his possession the pen drive containing evidence of the scandal.

The court had earlier sent notices to the police and Kamal Nath to reply to the petition.

The SIT constituted by the state government to probe the matter was supposed to present its report on the notice sent to Kamal Nath in this regard.

Importantly, Kamal Nath had earlier issued a clarification that he had only watched the 29 second-clip relating to the scandal.

In his clarification, he had said that the police produced the pen drive before him when he was the Chief Minister, but, he had returned the pen drive to the police after watching the clip.

The scandal came to light on September 19, 2019 when an engineer of Indore Municipal Corporation (IMC) filed a complaint with a police station in Indore alleging that he was being blackmailed with the release of a video of him in a compromising position if he did not pay Rs 3 crore to a woman.

Later, police conducted raids at different places in Indore and Bhopal and arrested five women and the driver of one of them in connection with the alleged scandal.

Police had seized a laptop, pen drives, CDs, and mobile phones from some of them.

Later, police recovered sleazy videos and photographs allegedly featuring some former ministers, bureaucrats, politicians, and businessmen from the electronic gadgets seized from them.

The scandal was unearthed during the Kamal Nath Government regime in Madhya Pradesh.

The probe in the case has reportedly made little progress so far, giving rise to apprehensions in different quarters that the matter may be brushed under the carpet to shield high profile people involved in the scandal.

All the six accused are now out on bail.