Girish Talreja and Suraj Chokhani, arrested by ED in the Mahadev Satta App case, will be presented in the special court after some time. ED had presented both the accused in the court on Sunday and sought 14 days’ remand. However, the court sent him to jail for a day.
ED suspects that Chokhani has invested around Rs 423 crore of the betting app in the stock market. He has been identified as an associate of Mahadev App operator Hari Shankar Tibrewal. Chokhani is the MD of Ability Games. Allegedly engaged in sale of corona kits during COVID-19.
Girish Talreja is a hawala operator of Bhopal. He was wanted for transactions worth more than Rs 500 crore. He has close relations with Satta app promoters Saurabh Chandrakar and Ravi Uppal. ED has arrested Talreja from Bhopal and Chokhani from Kolkata.
Talreja has also been caught in IPL betting
ED investigation has revealed that Talreja operated an alleged illegal betting app called Lotus 365. Which is helpful to Mahadev Satta App. Through this, Talreja earned several crores of rupees, which was looted by creating shell companies. His relations with Shubham Soni and Ratanlal Jain of Bhopal have been revealed.
Transactions worth several crores of rupees have been detected between accused Shubham Soni, Pradeep Talreja and Ratanlal Jain. ED is currently searching for Ratanlal Jain. Talreja had earlier been arrested in the IPL betting case at Mumbai airport in 2019.
Chokhani was handling Sky Exchange App
ED lawyer Saurabh Pandey told the court that Hari Shankar Tibrewal, identified as the hawala operator, is originally from Kolkata but lives in Dubai. Tibrewal allegedly partnered with the promoters of the Mahadev app and also operated the betting app Sky Exchange.
The arrested accused Suraj Chokhani was allegedly handling Sky Exchange in India on behalf of Tibrewal. The investigation also revealed that Chokhani was creating a platform for joining new people in Sky Exchange, creating IDs and money laundering through benami bank accounts.
Invested the earnings of betting app in the share market
During investigation, ED came to know that through Chokhani, accused Tibrewal was investing speculative income from his Dubai based entities in the Indian stock market through Foreign Portfolio Investment (FPI). Tibrewal had also appointed many of his associates as directors in various companies.
Apart from this, he was also involved in large scale hawala activities of speculative funds. ED has seized assets worth Rs 580.78 crore of Tibrewal under PMLA. The agency also recovered Rs 1.86 crore cash and valuables worth Rs 1.78 crore during the search.
Talreja and Chokhani accused ED
On Sunday, the lawyer of Girish Talreja and Suraj Chokhani told the court that ED has not produced both of them in the court within 24 hours. Suraj Chokhani’s lawyer Ayush Jindal has said that we told the court that the arrest is illegal because the client was not produced in the court within 24 hours.
ED is saying that Harishankar Timberwal’s money came to us, that money has been invested in the share market. Allegations have been made that Harishankar’s money came through Mahadev App. There is no point in this, there is no logic in this. ED has said that the arrest took place at 12:55 am on Saturday night, while Suraj Chokhani was arrested on February 29.
10 accused have been arrested so far
ED has so far arrested nine accused in this case. The agency had earlier said that the illegal earnings from the Mahadev app were used to bribe politicians and bureaucrats in Chhattisgarh. So far, the ED has filed two chargesheets in the case.
These include charge sheets against Saurabh Chandrakar and Ravi Uppal, the two main promoters of the alleged illegal betting and gaming app. It had conducted several raids in the case earlier also. According to ED, the estimated illegal earnings in this case are around Rs 6,000 crore.
At the same time, during the search conducted under PMLA 2002, total movable property worth Rs 572.41 crore has been seized. Two provisional attachment orders have been issued. In which movable and immovable properties worth Rs 142.86 crore have been attached. Prosecution complaints in this case were filed on 20 October 2023 and 1 January 2024.
Till now 13 accused have not appeared in the court
On February 26, 13 people accused in the betting app case were asked to appear in the court. This includes app chief Saurabh Chandrakar, Ravi Uppal, Vishal Ahuja, Dheeraj Ahuja, Poonaram Verma, Shivkumar Verma, Yashoda Verma, Pawan Natthani, Rohit Gulati, Anil Aggarwal, Shubham Soni and two more people. Although he did not reach the court.
Also read these news related to this…
1. Mahadev Satta App… Talreja and Suraj jailed for one day: Main operators have been caught from Bhopal and Kolkata; The hearing will take place again tomorrow
Girish Talreja and Suraj Chokhani, the main operators of Mahadev Satta App, have been sent to jail for a day after their production. The ED team had reached Raipur court with both of them. ED had applied for 14 days remand. Read the full news…
2. Main operator of Mahadev Satta App arrested in Bhopal: Can bring to Raipur today; ED seizes assets worth Rs 580 crore of hawala operator
In the Mahadev Satta App case, ED (Enforcement Directorate) has seized assets worth Rs 580 crore of Dubai’s hawala operator. This includes Rs 3.64 crore cash and valuables. During the investigation, ED also came to know about the alleged involvement of officers and leaders of Chhattisgarh. Read the full news…
