IAF man seduced online – what is a honey trap?

The last few days probably turned out very badly for Ranjith KK, an Indian Air Force official who allegedly passed on secret information to Pakistan’s ISI, after being tricked into what major publications are calling a ‘honey trap’. But does it qualify as a honey trap? Or is it catfishing -- the term used to describe online impersonation? 

Let’s start from the beginning. Ranjith KK was allegedly conned into sharing information by ISI agents who created a fake profile of a woman called Damini McNaught, who claimed to be an executive of a UK-based media firm.

A senior police officer told India Today: “The woman befriended the airman and started extracting information about the air force. The officer never knew that he was passing on information to the Pakistani agency. She started taking details from him online on the pretext of an article on the IAF. Ranjith shared information on a number of fighter jets and also details of each and every building at his air force station.”

The persons handling McNaught’s profile claimed that they required information for articles McNaught was writing for a news magazine and Ranjith shared Air Force-related information. An officer speaking to Mail Today stated: “Ranjith shared Air Force-related information, mostly pertaining to deployment, recent exercises, movements and status of aircraft. He was being used to identify each building inside the Bathinda air force camp. After seeing Google map, she was asking him about the nature of the building. He helped them identify the air traffic controller building, the parking place of jet planes, connecting runway and bunker for the aircraft.”

Reportedly, money between Rs 30,000 and Rs 50,000, was twice transferred to his account. The officer claims that Ranjith was passing information in exchange for money. While the case does look like a honey trap because of the involvement of a pretty woman with a British accent (Ranjith received a few VOIP-based calls), this case cannot be quantified as a honey-trap. While a leading daily claimed that the friendship did include some dirty talk, it still doesn’t make it a classic honey trap case where information is exchanged after being seduced.  

(Also Read: IAF official arrested after being conned by British journo) 

What is a honey trap?

The honey trap is one of the most common tropes present in Forsythian spy thrillers where an attractive man or woman is used to gain secrets from an individual, usually in a position of power in the state. The most well-known master of this practice was Markus Wolf, an East German spymaster who is said to have used good-looking male spies to target single, lonely women in West Germany, the secretaries of powerful individuals.

He is said to have called these individuals ‘Romeo spies’, and the Stasi penetrated almost all levels of West German government, including that of the West German Chancellor Helmut Schmidt. Writing in his autobiography, Wolf claimed that he never pushed his officers to use these techniques: “They were sharp operators who realised that a lot can be done with sex. This is true in business and espionage because it opens up channels of communication more quickly than other approaches." And he didn’t have a shred of remorse as he pointed out, “I was running an intelligence service, not a lonely hearts club.”

Closer to catfishing, not honey trapping

The ISI incident (if the ISI is involved) should actually fall in the category of catfishing, a phenomenon more common on social networking sites and online dating sites, where one pretends to be someone else. Catfishing, while usually done to engage in fantasy, can also be used to commit fraud or identity theft. If we were to not engage in terminological inexactitude, we'd have to call this an instance of cat-fishing. Not that the term makes it any better for Ranjith or the others who had been 'seduced' online.