New Delhi: Ravi Uppal, co-promoter of the multi-crore Mahadev online betting app, has been arrested in the UAE, and India is moving to extradite him, officials said on Wednesday.
The development comes after a CBI team brought back Uppal's friend and another Mahadev app promoter, Saurabh Chandrakar, from Oman on November 1 after a court there allowed his extradition to India in a money laundering case being probed by the Enforcement Directorate (ED).
Authorities in Dubai arrested 46-year-old Uppal based on an Interpol Red Notice issued against him by Indian probe agencies, the officials told PTI.
The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) and the ED are working to extradite him to India, they said.
Uppal was once detained by authorities in the UAE in 2023, but agencies later found that he was in Australia.
Probe agencies have claimed that Uppal obtained a passport from Vanuatu, an archipelagic country located in the South Pacific Ocean, just like Chandrakar.
It charge-sheeted Uppal in October 2023, stating that he "generated and enjoyed proceeds of crime and is involved in their concealment and layering".
It alleged Uppal was "looking after the delivery of the liaisoning money to the bureaucrats and politicians of Chhattisgarh through Chandrabhushan Verma, an assistant sub-inspector of police, and some others".
Both Uppal and Chandrakar hail from Bhilai town in Durg district of Chhattisgarh.
A special court in Raipur on Wednesday granted eight-day custody of Chandrakar to the CBI.
The agency said the Mahadev app, also called Mahadev Online Book (MOB), began operations in 2019-20. Its user base grew "sharply" during the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 and continued to expand.
The app, which runs through thousands of panels, allegedly generated proceeds of crime worth Rs 80,000 crore since 2019.