Businessman Raj Kundra arrested by Mumbai crime branch

Businessman Raj Kundra

The Property Cell of Mumbai Crime Branch on Monday arrested businessman Raj Kundra, husband of Bollywood actress Shilpa Shetty, in connection with the pornography racket busted in February this year. The Mumbai police commissioner said Kundra is the key conspirator in the case and there is enough evidence against him.

"There was a case registered with the Crime Branch in February about the creation and publishing of pornographic films through apps. We have arrested Raj Kundra in this case as he appears to be the key conspirator. Further investigation is in progress," said Mumbai Police Commissioner Hemant Nagrale.

The Property Cell of the Mumbai police recently busted a gang involved in making of porn films under the guise of short films for OTT platforms. They had arrested actor Gehana Vasisth along with eight others in the case. According to crime branch, after shooting the porn films, the accused used to send them to a foreign-based company through a popular file sharing service and the same was uploaded on various apps to evade the Indian law enforcing agencies.

During the probe, the crime also arrested Umesh Kamat, who they said used to work with Kundra. After his arrest, Kundra's role surfaced but the crime branch had no evidence against him at the time. "Our team worked on it closely after filing the first charge sheet in the case. During the probe, we found that the accused had, in fact, sent WeTransfer files abroad while sitting in Kundra's office," said a crime branch officer.

Initially, the crime branch had said that the gang used to lure aspirants claiming to give them good roles in OTT films and later ended up forcing them into pornography. The accused used to earned Rs 2-Rs 3 lakh a video and the victims were paid Rs 20,000 to Rs 25,000.