Former Chhattisgarh chief minister and Congress leader Bhupesh Baghel has been named as an accused in the FIR in the 'Mahadev Book Online' app scam, estimated to be worth Rs 6,000 crore, as reported by Hindustan Times. Reportedly, the Mahadev betting app and its associate companies illegally collected Rs 450 crore worth of proceeds of crime every month.
Along with Baghel, Mahadev promoters Sourabh Chandrakar and Ravi Uppal, 16 other named accused persons have been named in the first information report. Unnamed bureaucrats, police officers and officers on special duty during the ex-CM's tenure too have been charged with various sections pertaining to cheating, criminal conspiracy, breach of trust, and forgery under the Indian Penal Code (IPC), and sections 7 and 11 of the Prevention of Corruption Act.
The FIR was registered by the Economic Offences Wing (EOW) in Raipur on March 4, as per the HT report. It did not name any senior police or administrative officer.
In January, the Enforcement Directorate (ED) named Baghel in a supplementary chargesheet related to allegations of receiving bribes amounting to approximately Rs 508 crore from the promoters of the Mahadev app from the UAE.
Baghel is the Congress' Lok Sabha election candidate from Rajnandgaon constituency where polling will be held in the second phase on April 26.
Background
In July 2022, the ED had started investigating the Mahadev Book Online Betting App under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA), alleging that the promoters of the app – Saurabh Chandrakar and Ravi Uppal – who are based overseas were remotely running illegal betting operations with proceeds of crimes running into several thousand crores.
The Mahadev online book betting application is an umbrella syndicate arranging online platforms for enabling illegal betting websites, the ED alleged.
The agency had said that the alleged illegal funds generated by the app were used to pay bribes to politicians and bureaucrats in Chhattisgarh. The company promoters hail from Bhilai in Chhattisgarh. Saurabh used to run a small business ‘Mahadev Juice Corner’ in Bhilai till 2018.
The promoters and panel operators fetched around Rs 450 crore per month through the online betting app after the lockdown was imposed in 2020 (following the outbreak of COVID-19 pandemic), the FIR claimed.
For transaction of the illegally obtained money, bank accounts were opened on the basis of fake documents by the promoters and panel operators of the Mahadev Book App and hundreds of bank accounts were operated on the basis of commission with the money obtained from betting. The panel operators transferred illegal money to the promoters in the UAE through various bank accounts, it said.
A huge amount of money was spent by the app promoters for advertising betting websites. For this, annual star-studded events were also organised, in which celebrities were involved by paying them illegal money obtained from betting, the FIR said.
The illegal money obtained from online betting by the app promoters has been invested in many companies, shell companies, stock market and crypto currency, it said.
To prevent legal action against the illegal act of online betting, the promoters of Mahadev Book App had given huge protection money to various police and administrative officers and influential political persons, it claimed.
Hawala operators were used for the arrangement and distribution of the protection money and police officers/employees were also used as couriers for the purpose, the FIR claimed.
Various police, administrative officers and influential political persons have misused their positions and acquired illegal assets in the form of protection money.
Provisional attachment of many immovable properties has been done by the ED, it said.
A total of eleven persons have been arrested by the ED in this case till now.
Two chargesheets have been filed and multiple raids have been conducted.
Many celebrities and Bollywood actors too were summoned for questioning by the agency on their links with the online betting platform and the mode of payment.
The projected proceeds of crime in this case are about Rs 6,000 crore, according to the ED.
The ED investigation has shown that the Mahadev Online Book App is run from a central head office in the UAE.
On November 3 last year, the federal agency arrested alleged courier Asim Das, a driver, and and a constable named Bhim Singh Yadav, from a Raipur hotel, four days before the first phase of Chhattisgarh Assembly elections. The authorities had seized Rs 5.39 crores in cash from Das’s car.
The ED had claimed that forensic analysis and statement made by Asim Das led to "startling allegations" that Mahadev betting app promoters have paid about Rs 508 crore from the UAE to former Chhattisgarh CM Bhupesh Baghel.
The ED quoted Das as saying in his November statement that he came to Raipur to deliver the money to “political executives” of the “Indian Congress party” on the instructions of Shubham Soni, one of the key accused and a promoter of the app, who had called him to Dubai in October 2023 and said he would be "provided cash which was to be delivered to Mr Bhupesh Baghel."
Incidentally, Asim Das' 62-year-old father Sushil Das was found dead under suspicious circumstances in a well on December 6 in Chhattisgarh's Durg district.
Baghel had dubbed these charges as an attempt to "malign" his image while the Congress termed it "vendetta politics" by the Centre.
However, on November 25, Asim Das submitted before the special court in Raipur that he had been framed as part of a conspiracy and he had never delivered cash to politicians. He alleged that he was forcefully made to sign a statement in English, a language he does not comprehend in a letter written from jail to the Director of the ED and other higher authorities.
Meanwhile, Mahadev app promoters Sourabh Chandrakar and Ravi Uppal were detained in Dubai based on an Interpol red notice issued at the behest of the ED and the agency is trying to deport or extradite them from the UAE to India.
In January, the ED told the special court in Raipur that Das has now stated that his first statement given to the agency on November 3 last year in which he cited Baghel’s name was “true and correct”. The ED claimed that Das was coerced into giving a handwritten retraction of his earlier statement.
Moreover, in March, the ED froze security holdings worth Rs 580 crore and seized cash and valuables amounting to Rs 3.64 crore of a Kolkata-based 'hawala operator' after recent raids in six cities in connection with the ongoing investigation in the Mahadev betting app money laundering case.
It said that the accused Harishankar Tibrewal who currently stays in Dubai. collaborated with the founders of the Mahadev app and owned and operated skyexchange, an accused illicit betting app.
(With additional inputs from PTI)
