Who is Kirti Patel? Gujarat influencer arrested for honey-trapping builder, attempting Rs 2 crore extortion

Kirti Patel, a popular social media influencer who had been on the run for nearly a year, has been arrested by the police in Gujarat in a case of honey-trapping and extortion. For more than 10 months, Kirti managed to evade the police by constantly changing cities and using different SIM cards on her mobile phone. Police said a case had been registered against Kirti in June last year and a court had also issued a warrant against her some time later.

What did police say?
"(Kirti) Patel was accused of honeytrapping a builder in Surat and then blackmailing him, demanding crores. Four other people were also named in the first information report (FIR) and had been arrested earlier," a police official said.
Deputy Commissioner of Police (DCP) Alok Kumar said, "We had been trying to track Kirti Patel down for 10 months. With the help of our technical team and cyber experts, we tracked her location to Sarkhej in Ahmedabad. We contacted our counterparts in Ahmedabad and arrested her. She has been accused of honeytrapping and extortion...In these 10 months, her location kept changing constantly, in different parts of Gujarat. The IP address kept changing, as did her phone numbers and SIM cards. We also coordinated with Instagram to get her location."

Who is Kirti Patel?
Kirti Patel, also known as Kirti Adalja, is a digital content creator with a huge online following. Kirti has over 1.3 million (13 lakh) followers on Instagram and more than two lakh on YouTube. She has also gained a reputation of putting abusive and threatening posts on social media. Despite being on the run, Kirti continued to stay active online, with her Instagram posts featuring the Mahakumbh in Prayagraj earlier this year.
Earlier, in 2020, she was linked to a case of attempted murder. The same year, she was fined Rs 25,000 by the forest department after she posted a TikTok video holding an owl, which is a protected species under the law.