‘Hotel Rimjhim and Restaurant’, reads a flapping banner hanging from a two-storeyed run-down building on a patch of land, which looks like the middle of nowhere. Overrun by wild shrubs and unkempt trees, it lies on Bijnor-Chandrapur road, in a non-descript corner of Uttar Pradesh called Kiratpur.
If not for the banner, this single storey building – with its off-white walls, brown gate, and red-brick borders – would pass off as an old abandoned structure.
A man walks past the hotel, and moves back and forth before stopping. “Aaap yahan Kaam kartay hain keya. (Do you work here sir?)”. He deflects. “Arsalan naam ka koi aadmi kisi ladki ke sath aaya tha kya January mein? (Did a man by the name Arsalan come here sometime in January, with a woman?)”. This time the question is much more specific. He takes a pause, shakes his head, and flatly denies knowing anything.
If he is speaking the truth, this man may be the only one in Kiratpur, who does not know about this story. It was the biggest scandal in this town recently.
The story begins on December 21, 2025. It was late in the evening and Arsalan had returned home. A text message popped up on Arsalan’s phone screen. It was from an unknown number.
Arsalan, who goes by only one name, is among the wealthier lot in this town where sugarcane farming is the mainstay. His father Mohammad Ibrahim, one of the prominent businessmen in the area, owns two petrol pumps. His mother is a teacher at a local school. For a conservative town, Arsalan is, at 28, unusually unmarried for his age.
Intrigued by the message from the unknown sender, Arsalan taps the display picture icon and finds a young woman with a fair, chiselled face, her head draped in a white dupatta, staring back at him. My name is Fauzia, she texts him.
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Arsalan has not heard of the name before and is sceptical. His father is an influential man in a town where local businessmen lead its political and economic hierarchies, and Arsalan can’t afford to trust strangers.
But then she drops the names of a few “common” friends, including Shavez, and Arsalan loosens up.
A date with consequences
Shavez Ansari aka Sonu (30) is the local councillor and member of the Samajwadi Party (SP). Only two years apart in age, Shavez and Arsalan practically grew up together in Mohalla Ansariyan locality.
Shavez’s social media feed is dotted by his pictures — clad in the red Gandhian cap symbolic of the party and a black Nehruvian jacket over white kurta — shaking hands with SP supremo Akhilesh Yadav.
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“He organises a lot of party events in Kiratpur, and also campaigns during local elections. He is a well-known man in the town’s VIP circle,” a policeman says.
“Both Shavez and Arsalan have resided in the locality for a long time. They have known each other for quite a while,” confirmed one of the police investigators.
From that first text message to regular phone calls, their communication evolved rapidly. Arsalan grew closer to Fauzia, and by the turn of the new year, the duo begins having regular video calls. By now, Fauzia has started to broach the idea of a meeting in person. As per the statement given by Mohammed Ibrahim to police, his son was mostly disinterested.
“Arsalan also claimed that as he hadn’t known Fauzia for long, he kept dodging the topic of meeting her,” a police officer says.
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But with Fauzia calling him incessantly, Arsalan eventually caves in. They agree to meet on January 10, near Shakti crossroad in Bijnor. Within minutes, she insisted on going to a hotel, Arsalan would later tell police.
“One of Arsalan’s associates owns the Rimjhim hotel in Kiratpur. So, Arsalan made a call to him, and asked him to make arrangements while he arrived with Fauzia,” a police officer says.
After their rendezvous at the hotel, messages from Fauzia become sparse and perfunctory. A “hi” here, a “hello” there. Arsalan did not make much of it. She may have lost interest in him, Arsalan tells himself and moves on with his life.
But then, he receives a call.
On January 21, Adil Zaidi, another local leader, associated with Rakesh Tikait’s Kisan Morcha, rings him up.
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Like Shavez, Adil, too, lives in Mohalla Ansariyan and has family ties with Arsalan. “Adil told him that the police have received a complaint against him. It was from a woman named Fauzia, who claimed that he had made carnal relations with her by promising marriage. He asked Arsalan to rush to his house,” an investigator says.
As soon as Arsalan enters Adil’s house, a chill runs down his spine. Two policemen from Kiratpur police station are waiting for him. Head Constable Lalu Yadav, 36, and Constable Puneet Tyagi, 30.
“Adil said that both policemen have received a complaint from a woman, and the videos to back the allegation,” an officer recalls.
What video? Arsalan wonders. Turns out, sometime during their stay at the hotel, as Arsalan was getting dressed, Fauzia had secretly filmed him.
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But all is not lost, Adil tells Arsalan. The police have not registered a case, yet. Rs 10 lakh: This was the amount the woman needed to bury the matter. Or else, the scandal would be all over the local Hindi newspapers, he warns Arsalan.
It could all go away, Adil tells him.
“Adil asked Arsalan to think about his father. His reputation. He claimed he knows the woman and would get her to settle for Rs 8 lakh,” a police officer says.
Arsalan agrees to the deal, and leaves Adil’s house, promising to return soon.
At home, though, he has a rethink. The video is already with her. What if she demands more later? What if she leaks it despite taking the money?
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It is a sleepless night for Arsalan. The next morning, he pulls himself together and heads to the Kiratpur police station. He recounts the whole story to an officer, omitting not a single detail. An FIR under sections of extortion is registered on January 22 and probe begins.
What the police found in the next 48 hours was a set-up for Arsalan from the get go. Nothing about his brief, but intense, association with Fauzia was true. Not even her name. She was Salma, a 35-year-old woman, who was married to a man named Ismail in Mandawar town in Bijnor.
But that was not the most shocking part of the entire episode; Arsalan always had a strange hunch about her — one reason he kept on dodging the plan to meet her.
What hit Arsalan like a bolt was the mastermind of the ruse: his childhood friend Shavez. “It was Shavez who had been in touch with Salma aka Fauzia and had given Arsalan’s contact details to her,” says a police official involved with the probe.
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The two policemen, too, were not on official duty but hired to play a part in the trap, it was alleged.
The making of a small-town scandal
Even as Kiratpur spoke about this scandal in hushed voices, discussing its contours privately behind the walls of their homes, it alarmed the police. It is not something that happens often here.
About 160 km from the national capital, Kiratpur falls on National Highway 34 but is known to be one of the quieter parts of Bijnor.
At the base of the Shivalik ranges, Kiratpur is located in Najibabad, a tehsil known to house Jats and Muslim artisans, involved in furniture making, along with sugarcane farming. The population of Kirtarpur is around 70 thousand and an elected Nagar Palika Parishad runs its municipal affairs. Everything here is a shade of brown and green: muddy two- to three-floor houses with green sugarcane fields in the backdrop.
“He is from one of the more affluent families of Kiratpur, and his family has deep ties among the local leaders from every party,” a policeman says, referring to Arsalan.
The first and only arrest in the case so far has been of Shavez, who was picked up from his home in Mohallah Ansariyan in February. The others were on the run for days, and by the time police could catch hold of them, Salma, the two policemen, and Adil had managed to secure anticipatory bail from a court.
While Shavez has been arrested for blackmail and extortion, Lalu and Puneet, the policemen, have been suspended only for not reporting the matter to seniors.
“Arsalan took the names of both police officials. When they were interrogated, they claimed that they were just there to ‘sort out’ the issue and didn’t ask for money. But based on his complaint, we filed a case,” a police officer says.
A ‘pandemic’ of blackmail
Arsalan’s case may have become a scandal, especially because of its high-profile victim, but is certainly not the only such case to have come out of Bijnor recently. Situated in the north-western part of West UP, there has been an unprecedented rise in cases of blackmail and extortion involving intimate videos.
In February this year, the UP Police sealed a restaurant in Bijnor and registered an FIR against one of the employees of the eatery for allegedly filming private moments of young couples. The accused used to discreetly ask young couples to sit in a concealed cabin located beneath the staircase of the restaurant and film them through hidden cameras, police reveal.
In March 2023, three men and a woman were arrested from an area under Chandpur Police Station for allegedly running a honey-trap extortion racket, police say. The gang used to make private videos of people and extort money from them by threatening to make those videos public.
The case, initially filed at Najibabad district court, reached Allahabad High Court after Fauzia and Adil applied for anticipatory bail.
Taking note of Arsalan’s case, the court also expressed its concern about men getting caught in “honey-trap” cases by extortion gangs.
“If offences like these are permitted to continue, it would become difficult to live in a decent world,” the bench of Justices J J Munir and Tarun Saxena observed on March 30 while issuing the direction to the UP government; Additional Chief Secretary, Home Department; Director General of Police; and Inspector General (IG) of Meerut Zone.
The court has now directed that the police should investige whether this was a one-off case, or the accused are part of a larger “honey- trap” gang.
“…it requires thorough investigation to be undertaken by the Inspector General of Police of Meerut Zone. He shall alert the entire district police chiefs in the zone to maintain strict vigil if a gang of this kind is operating, or other gangs are also operating, blackmailing innocent people by utilising women for springing a honey trap, or in some other way, bringing about the same results,” the bench says.
For the police in Kiratpur, though, it is hard to believe that two of their colleagues were willing participants in what looked like an elaborate blackmail and extortion plan.
“They have been suspended and a departmental enquiry has been initiated against them. But it’s his (Arsalan’s) word against theirs. Police are called in to mediate multiple times in a small village. Their only fault was that they didn’t inform their seniors…” a police officer, who did not wish to be identified, says.
