On the sultry summer evening of May 3, Rajendra Kumar Bharti parked his vegetable cart at the crowded Bharat Mata Chowk in Raipur’s Gudhiyari area. He had finished his stock of onions, tomatoes and potatoes, and was now looking to buy a new sim for his cellphone. He strolled around the chowk, and found that a stall run by two men had an attractive offer. He bought the sim and gave the men―Sanju and Vaibhav Shukla―his Aadhaar and PAN details, photos and thumb impression. Bharti went home feeling accomplished.
“Months passed, and a courier landed on my doorstep with a statement of a bank account in my name,” he would later tell policemen. “To my horror, I saw that transactions worth crores of rupees had taken place in the account in two months.”
On August 10, based on Bharti’s complaint, the police in Raipur registered a first information report under section 420 (cheating) of the Indian Penal Code.
A day later, the Khamtarai police station in Raipur district registered a similar case. Arun Jal, a welder, complained that his bank accounts were suspended because of a high number of unusual transactions. He said his wife’s employer, one Rajat Agarwal, had opened accounts in their names and kept the ATM cards and passbooks.
Hundreds of kilometres away, in Bakkannapalem village near Visakhapatnam in Andhra Pradesh, the police’s cyber cell arrested 19 persons for allegedly facilitating dubious transactions through their bank accounts. The villagers had received rations and cash to create bank accounts in their name, and people running illegal betting websites had apparently deposited money collected from punters into these accounts.
The vendor, welder and villagers were all victims of Mahadev Online Book, an online betting and gambling platform built on thousands of such fraudulent bank accounts in several cities. The victims were mostly poor, unsuspecting persons who had no inkling of the worth and volume of transactions in their accounts.
The scam came to prominence after the Enforcement Directorate started investigating the money flowing into accounts linked to Mahadev Online Book and its mysterious promoter, Saurabh Chandrakar of Bhilai in Chhattisgarh. The ED registered a case on October 6 last year on the basis of the first Mahadev-related FIR registered by the Chhattisgarh Police in March last year. The police have registered 72 cases and arrested 449 people so far. After picking up more FIRs across the country, the ED filed a voluminous charge-sheet on October 20 naming 14 people, including Saurabh and his partner Ravi Uppal, as accused.
Investigators say Saurabh, who lives in Dubai, runs a transnational betting racket. The ED has approached the Interpol to issue a Red Corner Notice against him. The case has also caused a political upheaval in Chhattisgarh, with the ED making allegations that Mahadev Online Book might have links to Chief Minister Bhupesh Baghel, a charge vehemently denied by the Congress government in the state terming it a political conspiracy.
To dig more details on the founders of the app, ED officials went to Bhilai and met people who knew Saurabh. ED sources said Saurabh’s father, Rameshwar, was an assistant grade-two employee at Bhilai Municipal Corporation and his mother was a homemaker. Shubham Jain, a close friend of Saurabh’s elder brother, Gitesh, told the ED that the two of them (Jain and Gitesh) opened a shop named ‘Juice Factory’ in Bhilai in 2016. Saurabh began working there after completing his studies.
“Saurabh was involved in gambling and used to steal money from the shop,” said Jain. Saurabh later befriended Ravi Uppal, who used to frequent the shop and allegedly knew betting well. Ravi became Saurabh’s window to the betting world.
According to the ED, Saurabh and Ravi later cofounded Mahadev Online Book. The ED has recorded statements of around 75 people who either knew how the betting platform operated or were closely associated with the duo. Cellphone, bank and digital records that throw light on the betting syndicate are being gathered.
The ED says Mahadev Online Book began as a Telegram group in 2019-20. Saurabh ran it from his home. The group got a boost during the Covid lockdown. “The Telegram page started getting a lot of traction and it directed users to the website and app of Mahadev Online Book,” said an ED official. “Many websites came up during this period, offering live ludo and football and casino games. There were even online cricket matches, horse racing, greyhound racing and kabbadi. Mahadev Book expanded its operations very fast.”
Small-time celebrities and management experts were roped in to promote the website and give it credibility. In 2020, said the ED, Saurabh and Ravi bought Reddy Anna, a popular Andhra Pradesh-based betting app. With the help of associates, they started around 60 websites―Lotus365, Reddy Anna Book, Fairplay, Gold 365, laser247.com, laserbook247.com, betbhai.com, betook.com, cricketbet9.com and tigerexch247.com―that facilitated bets on cricket, badminton, tennis and football matches and card games such as poker, teen patti and dragon.
Money flowed in, and bigger celebrities were roped in to endorse the betting platforms. The ED says the list of actors who endorsed the platforms and attended promotional events includes Kapil Sharma, Huma Qureshi, Hina Khan and Ranbir Kapoor. Sharma reportedly promoted Mahadev Book, while Kapoor was allegedly part of the group of celebrities that promoted FairPlay.
As business grew, Saurabh and Ravi moved to Dubai. Saurabh’s father took voluntary retirement. The ED says the family vacations in Baku and Kenya.
Before moving to Dubai, Saurabh and Uppal franchised out Mahadev Book to those who could pay an earnest money of Rs15 lakh. The franchises were called ‘panels’; the Dubai office was called HO, or head office. HO would take 70 to 80 per cent of profits; the panel operator took the rest. Accounts were settled every week, and money was laundered through entities based in Hong Kong and Dubai before some of it was diverted back to India in the form of equity and property investments.
Over time, the number of panels multiplied and the volume of bets skyrocketed. The Dubai HO handled the surge by opening multiple call centres that directed each user to a suitable panel operator who, over WhatsApp, would share information on games, bets and where and how to deposit and withdraw money. One such call centre was busted by the Andhra Pradesh Police in Visakhapatnam in June. The ED says call centres outside India continue to operate freely.
Investigators said each panel had an ID comprising alphabets and numbers. The alphabets denoted the betting book―for example, R for Reddy Anna, M or MB for Mahadev Book and FP for Fairplay. So, FP127 meant there were at least 127 Fairplay panels. The ED says the syndicate ran nearly 2,000 panels, each earning Rs10 lakh a week on an average.
“The modus operandi was unique but simple,” said an official. “A lot of ideas seem to have been borrowed from Reddy Anna, which was the biggest online betting website before Mahadev.”
Investigators say the Dubai HO still employs around 4,000 people as ‘checkers’―those who work 12-hour shifts to keep tabs on the panels that are still live. Most of these checkers are reportedly from Bhilai and nearby places, and they live in villas in Dubai rented by Saurabh and Ravi.
Both Saurabh and Ravi have denied that they are promoters or founders of Mahadev Book. They say they are being targeted because of their growing presence in the real estate market in the UAE. In a statement issued through a PR agency, Saurabh said, “I am neither the promoter, director or founder of the Mahadev app.” He said he was ready to cooperate with the ED.
ED officials say Saurabh’s ill-gotten wealth would have remained hidden if not for his decision to flaunt it at his wedding in February this year. Top event management firms in Dubai and Mumbai were roped in to make lavish arrangements for the Rs200-crore, three-day wedding. The event made headlines mainly because of the number of private jets that were chartered to fly between India and Dubai. The ED said the list included a 64-seat Boeing 737 VIP (for the groom’s party), a 55-seat Airbus A 319 CJ (for the guests), a Boeing business jet with four bedrooms (for the bride’s party), and a 13-seat Gulfstream G550 (for actor Tiger Shroff, reportedly). According to sleuths, almost all the bills―for concept, decor, sound and lighting, fireworks, designers, choreographers and magicians from Delhi and Jaipur―were settled in cash.
Media reports after the wedding blew the lid off the scam. Celebrities, event managers and artists who attended the event have since distanced themselves from the controversy. All of them have denied links with Mahadev promoters.
The question is, how did the racket’s operations go unnoticed for two years? The ED says the arrest of an assistant sub-inspector of the Chhattisgarh Police, Chandra Bhushan Verma, has provided answers. Verma allegedly played a major role in providing “political and police” protection to the betting syndicate in Chhattisgarh. “He has become the main link between the Dubai-based promoters [of Mahadev] and the ‘powers that be’ in Chhattisgarh,” said the agency in its charge-sheet.
For his service, Verma allegedly received around 065 crore. The ED also alleged that it had in its possession statements pointing to his links to Vinod Verma, political adviser to Chhattisgarh Chief Minister Bhupesh Baghel. The ED recently carried out a raid against Vinod Verma and two officials in the chief minister’s office.
“I have no links whatsoever with the [arrested] ASI,” Vinod Verma told THE WEEK. “It is nothing but a political conspiracy to malign the Congress government and target the chief minister.”
Baghel has questioned the timing of the ED’s actions, which he said benefited only the BJP. The police had issued a lookout notice against Saurabh and Ravi on June 26, but its limited jurisdiction had prompted the state government to seek the Union government’s help in arresting the duo. “We have arrested around 450 people involved in the Mahadev case and issued lookout notices, but the [main] accused are not being arrested,” said Baghel.
Vinod Verma has questioned the ED on the delay in shutting down the app. “It was on the request of the cyber cell of the police in Raipur that Google removed the betting app [from its app store],” he said. “But what is the Union government doing to ban it completely from all other platforms?”
Meanwhile, Raipur Police SSP Prashant Agarwal said online betting and gambling has become a huge menace across the country. “Hundreds of people are getting duped every day. The law wasn’t very stringent earlier, which is why Mahadev Book could advertise freely, in media and cricket stadiums and so on. But the new Chattisgarh Gambling Prohibition Act, 2022, notified in April this year makes gambling, and even advertising, an offence which can be non-bailable,” he told THE WEEK.
However, for the alleged masterminds, the game of chance also meant a chance to escape the police net after filling their treasure trove. “They have not visited the country for two years now,’’ said Agarwal.