Raipur: Saurabh Chandrakar, the alleged kingpin of the Mahadev online betting app case, was sent to judicial custody till November 19 by a special CBI court in Raipur on Thursday, after his eight-day custodial remand ended.
Chandrakar, brought back from Oman this month, was produced before Special Judge (CBI) Manoj Kumar Singh Thakur. The CBI did not seek further custody. He was brought to India on November 1, produced in a Delhi court on November 2 which granted two days of transit remand, and brought before the Raipur court on November 4. He will be lodged in Raipur Central Jail.
His lawyer Tushar Giri said the court dismissed the Enforcement Directorate's application seeking execution of a non-bailable warrant issued earlier against his client. ED counsel Saurabh Kumar Pande said the agency would now move the special PMLA court to seek his custody in the money-laundering case.
While seeking custody on November 4, the CBI told the court it needed to identify the public servants who took "protection money" to let the app run. No official has been named so far.
The ED's parallel probe has pegged proceeds of crime in the case at about ₹94,000 crore, of which ₹4,000 crore to ₹5,000 crore is alleged to have been remitted to the promoters abroad. Promoters kept 70-80% of the earnings, the agency alleges, and the rest went to operators.
It says there were at least 3,200 betting panels across India and the UAE and around 1,000 WhatsApp operators at the main call centre in the UAE, with monthly earnings of about ₹950 crore. Operations began in 2019-20 and continue, it says, despite bans on platforms linked to the racket.
The allegations against the accused have not been established in court. The next hearing follows the expiry of his custody on November 19.
Chandrakar's extradition was one of the more closely watched movements in a case that has spread across Chhattisgarh, Maharashtra, Dubai and other jurisdictions.