Businessman Raj Kundra, the husband of Bollywood actor Shilpa Shetty, had connections with a London-based firm floated by his relative which was into producing pornographic content for India, said Mumbai police on Wednesday.
Kundra was arrested on Monday night in a case related to the alleged creation of pornographic films and publishing them through some apps. Later, he was produced before the court which remanded him in police custody till July 23.
According to Mumbai police, Kundra’s Vian Industries had a tie-up with UK company Kenrin, which owns the ‘Hotshots’ app which is allegedly involved in publishing pornographic films. The Joint Commissioner of Police, Milind Bharambe told reporters that the content creation, operation of the app, and accounting was all done through Vian Industries and published via Kenrin which is owned by Kundra’s brother-in-law.
The case against Kundra was registered at the Malwani police station on February 4, but the charge sheet was filed in April because there was lots of electronic evidence to be scanned to build a strong case, informed the police officials.
During the investigation, it was revealed that the company named Armsprime had prepared the app hotshots for Kenrin and there were other individual apps too. Before the Mumbai crime branch took over the case, there was a complaint with Maharashtra Cyber about the racket, said Mr. Bharambe.
FIRs were registered against Kundra after two women approached the Malwani police station and made certain allegations that they were asked to give bold scenes in the lure of a break in some web series or short stories.
Soon after the investigation, producer Roma Khan, her husband, actress Gehna Vashishth, director Tanveer Hashmi and Umesh Kamath who used to look after Raj Kundra’s firm operations were arrested.
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As per officials, in total 11 persons have been arrested so far in the case, and there are some wanted accused too. The crime branch has frozen at least ₹ 7.50 crore in various accounts of app operators as crime proceeds.
Meanwhile, Kundra has denied any wrongdoing and sought anticipatory bail in the case.