Mumbai: Intensifying its probe into the pornographic content case, the Crime Branch conducted raids at the house of arrested businessman Raj Kundra, the key conspirator, and recovered the server and 70 porn videos shot by his former PA Umesh Kamat.
Reportedly, the server has been for forensic analysis to ascertain if the accused businessman had used it to upload pornographic content to his UK-based shell company Kinrin. Besides, various banks have been asked to share details and cooperate in the investigation.
Following the raid, the police said that the WhatsApp chats of Raj Kundra have revealed that the businessman had hatched a plan B for broadcasting pornographic films as his Hotshots app was taken down by both Google and Apple store.
As per reports, the police have frozen Kundra’s bank accounts with deposits of around Rs 7.5 crore in connection with the porn app case. Kundra has been running the porn film business for the last two years, the cops said.
Scrutiny of agreement papers, subscription details, emails, WhatsApp chats, etc, the police have found out a series of conversations regarding a standby plan of launching another channel/OTT. On October 11, members of a WhatsApp group under the name – ‘H ACCOUNTS’ – discussed live revenue of Rs 1.85 lakh and movie sale of Rs 4.52 lakh.
The police had described Kundra as the “key conspirator” of the case, which was registered on February 4 at the Malwani police station in Mumbai suburb. In all, 11 persons have been arrested so far in the case.
Kundra has been booked under sections 420 (cheating), 34 (common intention), 292 and 293 (related to obscene and indecent advertisements and displays) of the Indian Penal Code (IPC) besides relevant sections of the IT Act and the Indecent Representation of Women (Prohibition) Act.
Bollywood actress Shilpa Shetty’s husband, Raj Kundra was arrested on 19 July and remanded to police custody till July 23. His partner Ryan Thorpe was also arrested by the Mumbai Police on the same day.
On Tuesday, Kundra’s lawyer made an argument in court that it is incorrect to classify the content as pornography. He also objected to the application of Section 67A of the Information Technology Act on sending obscene content in electronic form along with other sections with respect to pornography as these laws consider “actual intercourse” as porn and the rest everything is termed as vulgar content
