Mumbai: Bollywood actor turned fitness entrepreneur Sahil Khan has approached the sessions court for anticipatory bail after he has been named in the case registered on the online batting portal. The Mumbai police has claimed that he is one of the members of larger syndicate as he is partner in one of the subsidiary batting application.
Khan has on Tuesday moved an anticipatory bail plea which was argued by his lawyer Rajiv Chavan. The court on Tuesday heard the arguments and reserved the order for Wednesday.
Sahil Khan named key accused in app betting case
Khan has been named as one of the accused in the case first registered with Matunga police station in connection with online batting application Mahadev and its connected applications. Khan is said to be owner of one of such applications.
In his plea Khan has pleaded that he was never involved in any such illegal activities. Khan called himself a fitness entrepreneur and has said that he is a brand ambassadors for several brands.
The plea further states that even if the allegations are taken on the face value, and accepted entirely, it prima facie doesnot constitute any offence or a case against the present applicant. He also claimed that no role has been attributed to him in the complaint registered by the Matunga police.
The Mumbai police also submitted its reply objecting to Khan’s plea and stated that he is one of the member of larger syndicate of online batting. The special investigating team which is probing the case has in its reply stated that Khan is one of the partner in interconnected online batting application and thus is a part of the batting syndicate.
Volumn of the fraud is huge, says agency
The team further stated that, it is probing around 67 such batting applications which are operating through more that 2000 fictitious SIM cards and more than 17000 bogus bank accounts. Hence, the agency said the volumn of the fraud is huge. Besides the agency said so far it is revealed that the syndicate is said to have not paid taxes to the tune of ₹15000 crores out of the total profits earned by these apps. Besides, the agency said the online batting was promoted through more than 1000 channels on Telegram.
The prosecution also argued that the applications are linked to underworld don Dawood Ibrahim's son Mustakim, wherein the police said that the key conspirators had met Mustakim at his Dubai residence on may occasions and the funds were transferred using crypto currency.
