ED attaches assets worth Rs 1.84 crore in Surat’s illegal betting case

The ED initiated its investigation based on an FIR registered by the Surat police’s Detection of Crime Branch (DCB) wherein it was alleged that Harish had allegedly committed a criminal conspiracy with co-accused Rushikesh Adhikar Shinde and Huzefa Kausar Masakarwala.

They allegedly obtained many people’s identity documents, prepared “rent agreements” in their names, forged the signatures of shop owners in such agreements, and misused the identity documents to obtain licenses for dummy firms and open dummy accounts with various banks.

In its statement on Friday, the ED said that its investigation — which “traced” the money generated through illegal betting mobile applications CBTF247.com and T20EXCHANGE.com — had revealed that these dummy accounts were used for the purpose of routing and layering these funds.

The statement said that from the investigation, they found that Rajesh Lakhani, the proprietor of M/s. Maitri Enterprises and M/s. VC Metals Pvt. Ltd, had allegedly received money from these dummy bank accounts.

Earlier, in this case, searches were conducted, and a balance of Rs 5.67 crore across 92 bank accounts was frozen and seized. A prosecution complaint in this regard had been filed before Ahmedabad’s PMLA Court on October 25, 2024. Further investigation is underway.