The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), along with other agencies, extradited Sourabh Chandrakar — the mastermind behind the ₹ 6,000-crore Mahadev online gambling syndicate — from Oman on Sunday. One of the most-wanted individuals in connection with the racket, Chandrakar built the Mahadev betting empire with co-founder Ravi Uppal.
It was in Akash Ganga, Chhattisgarh police officials believe, that Chandrakar got pulled into more organised forms of illegal betting. He was always interested in cricket, and would bet money on games across the world. “Akash Ganga has a host of garment stores, and several people, including bookies, pass their time and supplement their income by organised betting. It was a small thing. “They were running the racket out of there, and had already set something up in Dubai. Their investigations alleged that the Mahadev app provided an online platform for illegal betting in different live games such as Teen Patti and poker, opportunities to bet on live cricket, badminton, tennis and other sports, and even bets on Indian election results. Alleging political linkages, they also questioned people close to then-chief minister Bhupesh Baghel, including his political adviser Verma and OSDs Manish Banchhor and Ashish Verma. “The Mahadev application is start-up of Congress government only.
“By 2014-2015, he worked at commercial complexes like the ready-made garment shops at a building called Akash Ganga. He earned between ₹ 12,000 to 14,000 a month, but he was already betting and gambling on his phone — a practice that is not uncommon for young men of his age. By 2017, Chandrakar was beginning to be known to the police. In 2021, the police investigated an illegal detention complaint at Talpuri International Colony, at a time when Covid-19 was raging, and first came across signs of organised illegal activity when they came across a room with computer systems. But the issue was that the moment there was a 10-minute period of inactivity, the system would log out from Dubai, leaving nothing substantial on the screen in India. In October 2022, the Enforcement Directorate got into the act and registered a case. On August 24, 2023, ED arrested four people in the money laundering case from Chhattisgarh — Sunil and Anil Dammani, Satish Chandrakar, and Chandra Bhushan Verma, a police sub-inspector. Meanwhile, Congress claimed in 2023 that it was Chhattisgarh police which busted the scam. “Our police unearthed the scam and arrested 500 people from across the country.
Because i knew his father, no case was registered, he beseeched me to intervene, and.
He had no criminal record at this point,” said Samit Mishra, a police officer of the Durg district cyber cell who has tracked him closely. It is likely that this is where Chandrakar met Ravi Uppal, the other promoter of the Mahadev app,” Mishra said. A political leader who HT spoke to once said he received a frantic phone call from his father. “He said that his son had gone mad betting on his laptop, and had been arrested by a few policemen. I did not know at the time what was to come,” the leader said. We suspected, but had no concrete evidence that it was betting,” an officer aware of the probe said. The agency identified Chandrakar and Uppal as the primary promoters, and said that they lived and worked in Dubai. All of them have said that they have nothing to do with the app. Congress government had given protection to the many people related to the scam,” said Ajay Chandrakar, former minister and BJP spokesperson, at that time. We have evidence that BJP gave protection to Chandrakar and I have photographs of a senior BJP leader with Saurabh Chandrakar,” said Sushil Anand Shukla, chief spokesperson of Chhattisgarh Congress.
