Who didn’t party with Jeffrey Epstein? That is the main question that should strike anyone reading sections of the 3 million bits and pieces of information—collectively called the Epstein Files—dumped in the public domain this month by the US Department of Justice. They show that rich, famous or influential (preferably all three) men were his main targets. Women need not have been any of the above, but beauty and youth were the key to an Epstein overture.

Much of the lakhs of emails and other communications merely verify that he was a smooth-talking influence peddler who used rich/famous people to access other rich/famous people, in order to facilitate mutually lucrative business deals. Pretty girls, the younger the better, were mainly a business aide, to tempt powerful men to “help" him. Exploiting teenage girls was not the main agenda—he only got caught for it like Al Capone was for tax evasion—they were his USP.

A shockingly effective USP too, judging by the list of powerful men, especially Americans, who were drawn into being “friends" with Epstein for this under-age inducement. These were men who seemingly had everything—billions in the bank, spouses, children, properties, yachts, planes, supercars and even adulation—and yet they still got lured by him. Just to indulge their darkest desires without fear of discovery? What does that reveal about human nature?

Many in India familiar with the corridors of power, would recall desi variants of Epstein, minus the paedophilia, of course. At the dawn of the age of “Page 3" and social media, inviting (or tempting) key people to a party, publicising photos with them to indicate proximity and using those to........

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