Chandrakar extradition may help unlock Rs 94,000 crore Mahadev betting app probe

Sourabh Chandrakar has been extradited from Oman and is a key figure in a significant illegal betting case.

RAIPUR: Sourabh Chandrakar, extradited from Oman on Sunday, is considered a prized catch for the central agencies here that are probing a huge illegal betting and money laundering network under the umbrella of Mahadev Online Book, estimated to have generated proceeds of crime of around Rs 94,000 crore.Part of the booty allegedly went into funding elections and sharing 'protection money' with bureaucrats and politicians for its uninterrupted operation.The accused, 116 of them, named by CBI and ED, includes former Chhattisgarh CM Bhupesh Baghel, senior police officers and officials who held top positions in the Chhattisgarh administration.Sources in the agencies expect Chandrakar, who in the past expressed willingness to 'cooperate' before he fled India, to shed light on many sensitive aspects of the case, which investigators have not been able to unravel so far.Meanwhile, ED has moved a special court in Raipur seeking to expedite its pending application for declaring Chandrakar a fugitive economic offender under FEO Act. This can help the agency in confiscating his attached properties worth over Rs 1,800 crore mostly in Dubai. ED’s application is pending in the Raipur court since Nov 2024, and the next date of hearing has been scheduled on Dec 5 after repeated adjournments.

Raipur Police’s EOW, acting on a reference from ED, had registered an FIR against Baghel in March 2024, naming him as one of the accused, along with promoters of the Mahadev app. In Dec that year, CBI had registered another FIR naming Baghel as an accused and carried out searches at his residence.BJP had made Mahadev app case one of its central planks against Congress in the 2023 assembly polls. The attack on the then governing Congress was spearheaded by PM Narendra Modi, who criticised it for not even sparing “Mahadev” in looting people.In 2023, ED also carried out searches at the residence of Vinod Verma, political adviser to the then CM. Later, the agency said another accused ASI Chandrabhushan Verma, through Vinod Verma and money sent by co-accused Ravi Uppal, corrupted the police system at Raipur and Durg. Chandrabhushan’s statement also records that part of the hawala proceeds collected from Nagpur reached a close friend of the then CM and two officers on special duty to the CM.Son of a municipal corporation employee, Chandrakar worked at a juice shop in Bhilai, earning about Rs 15,000 a month, before he ventured into online betting. Within a few years, he was living in Dubai’s luxury villas and travelling by chartered aircraft. He spent an astonishing Rs 200 crore on his wedding, investigators estimate.

Between those two worlds lies the story of Mahadev Online Book — an alleged betting empire that grew out of Chhattisgarh and went on to become one of India’s biggest laundering investigations.