Chhattisgarh ex-CM Bhupesh Baghel, others booked in Mahadev betting app case

PTI

Raipur, March 17

The economic offences wing (EOW) in Chhattisgarh has registered a case against former Chief Minister Bhupesh Baghel and others in the alleged Mahadev online betting scam based on a probe report submitted by the ED, officials said on Sunday.

EOW acts on ED report

• Based on an ED report, the FIR was registered against Baghel and others at the EOW police station in Chhattisgarh
• Baghel, along with app promoters Ravi Uppal, Saurabh Chandrakar, Shubham Soni & Anil Agrawal, and 14 others, has been named an accused
• Some bureaucrats, police officials, officers on special duty and other unidentified private persons have also been made accused

The Enforcement Directorate (ED), which has been investigating the Mahadev app-linked money laundering case for over a year, has alleged in the past that its probe has shown involvement of various high-ranking politicians and bureaucrats from Chhattisgarh, where the two main promoters of the app hail from.

The projected proceeds of crime in this case are about Rs 6,000 crore, according to the ED.

“The ED has been investigating the case and based on its report submitted to the state’s EOW/Anti-Corruption Bureau, the FIR was registered against Baghel and others at the EOW police station here on March 4,” a senior official said.

Baghel, a senior Congress leader, along with app promoters Ravi Uppal, Saurabh Chandrakar, Shubham Soni and Anil Kumar Agrawal, and 14 others, had been named as an accused in the FIR, he said.

Some bureaucrats, police officials, officers on special duty (OSDs) and other unidentified private persons had also been made accused (without being named) in the case, he said.

The case had been registered under various Sections of the IPC, including 120B (criminal conspiracy), 420 (cheating) and 471 (using as genuine a forged document), and provisions of the Prevention of Corruption (Amendment) Act, 2018, the official said.

The FIR, citing the ED’s report, said Mahadev Book App promoters Uppal, Chandrakar, Soni and Agrawal created the platform for live online betting and indulged in betting through WhatsApp, Facebook and Telegram, and other social media platforms.

The promoters created different platforms and conducted illegal acts of online betting through panel operators/ branch operators. They kept 70 to 80 per cent of the illegal earnings with them and distributed the rest of the money among panel operators/ branch operators, it alleged.

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 the Covid-19 pandemic), the FIR claimed.

So far, the ED has arrested nine persons in this case. The ED has filed two chargesheets in the case till now in a Raipur court, including against Chandrakar and Uppal. It had earlier conducted multiple raids in connection with the case.

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