Uppal is in jail after he was arrested by Dubai police recently while Chandrakar has been put under house arrest. The two are wanted here for illegal betting and money laundering allegedly involving transactions worth Rs 6,000 crore.
Sources indicated that despite the fact that Uppal was arrested by Dubai police on a red corner notice issued at the behest of the ED weeks ago, his deportation was taking unusually long. Since Chandrakar’s locations were also shared with the Dubai authorities by the agency, he was put under house arrest recently.
The agency is simultaneously filing for an extradition request through the courts here, which will be served to the UAE authorities by the foreign ministry. “But the entire process takes months to execute,” a source aware of the investigation said.
Red corner notices were issued against Uppal and Chandrakar some time in October after the ED had moved a special court in Raipur, filed a chargesheet and obtained a non-bailable warrant against them.
Uppal’s arrest marks a big turn in the Mahadev Book Online case. The allegation by one of the accused that the promoters of the online betting platform had given Rs 500 crore in bribes to Congress politicians became a big issue in the Chhattisgarh elections, with BJP using it as a stick to beat the then ruling party in the state.
The PM’s “Mahadev ko bhi nahin choda” (they did not spare even Lord Mahadev) resonated through the campaign and, as the post-poll analysis suggests, could have contributed to the shock defeat of Congress which was seen as the overwhelming favourite.
On November 2, just weeks ahead of polling in Chhattisgarh, the ED arrested Asim Das, a courier with Rs 5 crore cash, in Raipur. The agency claimed that the courier had confessed that the cash was to be delivered to politician ‘Baghel’ and was sent by Mahadev app promoters Chandrakar and Uppal.
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