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Mahadev betting app promoter Sourabh Chandrakar brought back from Oman by CBI to face two CBI cases, ED probe
The CBI brought Mahadev betting app promoter Sourabh Chandrakar back from Muscat on 1 November after Oman approved India's extradition request. He was to be produced before a special CBI court in Raipur on 2 November. He faces two CBI cases and an ED case over a Rs 6,000 crore network.
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The Central Bureau of Investigation has brought Sourabh Chandrakar, the alleged promoter of the Mahadev online betting app, back to India from Oman. A CBI team escorted him from Muscat on Sunday, 1 November, after Omani authorities approved India's formal extradition request. After a medical examination and transit remand formalities, he was to be produced before a special CBI court in Raipur, Chhattisgarh, on Monday, 2 November.
The cases against him
Chandrakar is wanted in two CBI cases and a separate money-laundering case by the Enforcement Directorate. The CBI took up the cases at the Chhattisgarh government's request. Its chargesheets invoke the Prevention of Corruption Act, 1988, Indian Penal Code provisions on criminal conspiracy, cheating and forgery, and the Chhattisgarh Gambling (Prohibition) Act. The CBI filed 11 chargesheets across the two cases in July.
He was detained earlier this year by the Royal Oman Police on an Interpol Red Corner Notice. UAE authorities had earlier detained him in October 2024 on a Red Notice, but that request to send him back to India was not completed.
Chandrakar and Ravi Uppal, both from Bhilai in Chhattisgarh, started the Mahadev betting business in 2018 and moved to Dubai around 2019. The app took bets on cricket and other sports, poker and card games, working through a network of local agents who signed up users, managed their accounts and collected money. The ED says it operated through more than 3,200 franchise betting panels in India and abroad, with promoters keeping 70% to 75% of profits.
The ED estimates the illegal earnings at about Rs 6,000 crore. One report says that in September the agency told a Raipur court the alleged proceeds of crime totalled Rs 94,400 crore, which it described as an estimate and not an amount recovered. By September it had filed six prosecution complaints naming 116 accused and arrested 14 people. In March it attached assets worth about Rs 1,700 crore, including properties in Dubai.
The agency has also scrutinised Chandrakar's February 2023 wedding in the UAE, where it says about Rs 200 crore was spent, including Rs 112 crore in hawala payments to an event company. The CBI alleges that betting proceeds moved through several bank accounts before being sent abroad and that some public servants were paid to help the network operate. The ED accuses former Chhattisgarh chief minister Bhupesh Baghel of receiving Rs 508 crore in kickbacks. Baghel denies this.
Investigators are seeking the UAE's cooperation to bring back Uppal, who remains outside the country. The reports found do not give a trial date or say what remand the court ordered.
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