Amid the ED investigation into the Mahadev app scam, a breaking broke on TV channels on Wednesday afternoon that the central probe agency is going to interrogate a top Bollywood actor. This investigation is related to the Mahadev App scam. The Mahadev app scam is an alleged Rs 5,000 crore scam linked to an illegal betting ring. This is not the first time this scam has attracted attention. Earlier in August, Chhattisgarh Chief Minister Bhupesh Baghel’s political advisor and his two officers on special duty (OSD) were questioned over the matter. There has been a lot of politics on this.
Investigation has revealed that the mastermind behind Mahadev App is Saurabh Chandrakar, a 26-year-old man from Bhilai city of Chhattisgarh. Saurabh is one of the two promoters of the company. It is learned about Saurabh that his childhood was spent in extreme poverty. To survive he had to work in a local textile shop. An interesting thing has also come to light that Saurabh was fond of betting since a long time. However, he came into limelight when he married his childhood sweetheart from a village in Chhattisgarh in Dubai for Rs 200 crore. Veteran Bollywood celebrities attended her wedding ceremony.
Chandrakar’s father was a Grade 4 employee in Bhilai Municipal Corporation. At that time Saurabh Chandrakar’s family lived in a dilapidated house. Saurabh studied till 12th in a local school. He started working at the age of just 17. She worked in clothing stores in a building named Akash Ganga from 2014-2015. Akash Ganga is a famous place for textile shops. He earned between Rs 12,000 and Rs 14,000 every month. Even during this time, Saurabh used to bet and gamble on the phone. However, till then no criminal case had been registered against him.
Samit Mishra, a police officer of cyber cell of Durg district, said – Now Chandrakar is being closely monitored. Chhattisgarh Police officials believe that Chandrakar was involved in illegal betting in Akash Ganga itself. He was always interested in cricket. He used to bet on sports. It is believed that many employees in Akash Ganga used to bet. It is likely that it was here that Chandrakar met Ravi Uppal (50), the second promoter of Mahadev App. Finally, by the year 2017, the police started knowing Chandrakar.
Regarding this, a politician says that he had received a phone call from his father. The father told that his son has gone crazy betting on his laptop. Some policemen had arrested him. Since I knew his father, he requested me to do something. After this, when I tried, no case was registered. It was a minor incident but even I did not know what was going to happen.
Ravi Uppal is said to be 24 years older than Chandrakar. By the time Ravi met Chandrakar in 2017, he had already run several small-scale bookmaking businesses in Bhilai, Pune and Bangalore. Later he came into a betting network and developed the app. In 2018, impressed by Chandrakar’s interest in the sport, Ravi signed him up. Then both of them started building a network. Within a few months, Chandrakar opened a restaurant named Juice Factory in Nehru Nagar, Bhilai.
In 2021, when police were investigating a complaint related to Talpuri International Colony, they first encountered indications of organized illegal activity. An official aware of the investigation into the Mahadev App case said that the investigation revealed that they were running the racket from Dubai. The challenge was that as soon as there was 10 minutes of inactivity, the system would log out of Dubai. Nothing could be made out. Although we had suspicions, we had no solid evidence that it was betting.
Finally, Durg Police conducted a second raid in Mohan Nagar on March 30, 2022. Chandrakar and Uppal were not present on the spot. It also became clear that the operation was actually a betting racket. In October 2022, the Enforcement Directorate swung into action and registered a case. The ED investigation found that the Mahadev app provided an online platform for illegal betting in various live games like Teen Patti and Poker, betting on live cricket, badminton, tennis and other sports and even betting on election results. Went.
The ED identified Chandrakar and Uppal as the promoters. ED said that both lived and worked in Dubai. ED investigation found that the accused used to advertise contact numbers on various websites and lure people with profits. On August 24 this year, ED arrested four people from Chhattisgarh in a money laundering case. The names of these accused were Sunil, Anil Dammani, Satish Chandrakar. The fourth one was also a police sub-inspector, Chandra Bhushan Verma. ED also interrogated Chief Minister Baghel’s political advisor Verma and OSDs Manish Banchhor and Ashish Verma.
However, all three have said that they have nothing to do with the app. Whereas BJP is the attacker. BJP says that Mahadev application is a start-up of Congress government. The Congress government gave protection to people associated with the scam. On the other hand, Congress claims that it was the Chhattisgarh Police which busted the scam. Chhattisgarh Police exposed the scam and arrested 500 people from across the country. Chief spokesperson of Chhattisgarh Congress Sushil Anand Shukla said- We have evidence that BJP had given protection to Chandrakar. I have photographs of a senior BJP leader with Saurabh Chandrakar.
Even in Bhilai, people accept the fact that Chandrakar made money through betting. People say that during the last four years, Chandrakar has given work to many youth in Dubai. A person who lived in Chandrakar’s area said that Chandrakar had hired about a thousand people to work for him. At least one thousand youth of Durg and Bhilai are now abroad. All these were included by Chandrakar. A neighbor told that most of them were in contact with him since the initial days of betting.
