Mumbai (The Hawk): According to the Maharashtra Cyber Police, businessman Raj Kundra, the husband of Bollywood actress Shilpa Shetty, and others have been charged for creating pornographic content in a few upscale hotels and distributing it via OTT platforms for financial gain.
According to the Cyber Police's charge-sheet presented to a court last week, Kundra, together with models Sherlyn Chopra and Poonam Pandey, a film producer named Meeta Jhunjhunwala, and a photographer named Raju Dubey, reportedly recorded the obscene or pornographic recordings in two upscale suburban hotels.
The Mumbai Police Crime Branch had previously filed separate chargesheets in April and September of 2021 in the high-profile pornographic racket case that surfaced following a raid at a home on Madh Island in February (2021).
According to the Cyber Police, who had filed a case in 2019, Kundra, Director of Armsprime Media Ltd., was involved in creating and disseminating pornographic videos on specific websites.
Suvajit Choudhary, an employee of Banana Prime OTT, and Umesh Kamath, an employee of Kundra, are both mentioned in the 450-page chargesheet for allegedly making the web series "Prem Paglani," which contained pornography and was uploaded to the OTT.
Pandey is also charged with creating her own mobile application, dubbed "The Poonam Pandey," having her films produced, uploaded, and distributed with the aid of Kundra's business.
Dubey was also accused of filming Chopra's videos by the Cyber Police, while Jhunjhunwala is charged with complicity for allegedly writing and directing storylines for Chopra (Chopra).
While they are searching for additional "missing" models who appeared in the pornographic videos or web series, the Cyber Police has alleged that Kundra's company "aided and abetted the crime" by receiving financial benefits from all of the other co-accused, despite knowing that doing so is against the law.
Kundra was sentenced to two months in custody before being granted release in September 2021 after the high-profile case was disclosed in the sweep by the Mumbai Police Crime Branch, in which several of the accused were apprehended.
The other defendants included Kundra's brother-in-law Pradeep Bakshi, who is based in London and is in charge of the companies Kenrin and HotShot, Ryan Thorpe, the IT director of Kundra's company Viaan Enterprises, and Yash Thakur, also known as Arvind Shrivastav, who is thought to reside in Singapore.
According to its supplemental chargesheet from September 2021, the Mumbai Police had also frozen Thakur's bank accounts with a total of Rs 6.50 crore in them and taken the depositions of 43 witnesses in the case. They had also accused Kundra of creating approximately 100 porn movies.
(Inputs from Agencies)