Statement of Viaan Industries staff key to establish Raj Kundra’s role

Four persons working at businessman Raj Kundra’s Viaan Industries have allegedly provided crucial insight into how the Mumbai office of the firm was used to facilitate a pornographic racket, police sources said Sunday.

Kundra was arrested by the Mumbai Police last Monday along with the IT head of his company Ryan Thorpe in connection with making pornographic content available through mobile apps. A statement of Kundra’s wife Shilpa Shetty, an actor and businesswoman who was one of the directors in the firm till 2010, was also recorded by the police last week.

Apart from the technical data seized so far, police believe the statements of the four people working at Viaan Industries will also play a crucial role in establishing the role of Kundra in the porn racket.

An official said one of the employees at Viaan Industries had told the police that soon after an FIR was registered in February, they were instructed to delete all the pornographic content from their servers. The police have now added sections of the destruction of evidence against the accused.

An officer said while the app ‘Hotshots’ was owned by UK-based company Kenrin Pvt Ltd, it was operated from the premises of Mumbai-based Viaan Industries. The police have also claimed that Kundra took all the major decisions when it came to the functioning of the app.

An officer added that apart from ‘Hotshots’, there were a few other apps that were used by Kundra and are under scanner. “We have found that after Hotshots was taken down by Google Playstore and Apple Store, they had plans to set up other apps to upload pornographic content. We are verifying that,” the officer said.

The crime branch has custody of Kundra and Thorpe till Tuesday and is likely to seek further custody of the two.