Mumbai: A special PMLA court has rejected anticipatory bail plea of the partnership firm that is said to have received proceeds of crime to the tune of Rs 13 crore in connection with Fairplay illegal betting and cricket broadcast case.
About The Case
The three partners, Santosh Singh, Mukesh Kumar and Manu Kanskar, had moved the court for anticipatory bail after the investigating officer summoned them to join the probe. It is alleged that their firm, Maa Sharda Sales, was allegedly involved in money laundering. The three, however, had claimed that they were partners since May 25, 2023, after the FIR in the case was lodged.
The defence lawyer Subir Sarkar had pleaded that the applicants had submitted that the accounts of their partnership firm had been seized in June 2024. At that time, the balance was Rs 28 lakh. He also argued that there was no material to connect the applicants with the crime and with Fairplay. Sarkar contended that without the knowledge of the partners, the account of the firm has been used. The Enforcement Directorate prosecutor Arvind Aghav had opposed the plea. The ED had claimed that the complainant, Viacom 18, had multiple TV channels and a VOOT OTT platform.
The agency alleged that in October 2021, the company’s anti-piracy technical team gathered knowledge that most of Viacom 18’s paid content was being shown unauthorisedly on various apps. It was also alleged that from March 31, 2023, to April 7, 2023, the company had the digital rights for broadcasting Tata IPL 2023, but the owners of Fairplay App and website, namely Abbas, Joey, Penny without having any official license from the company, broadcasted and rebroadcasted the same for free.
Due to this, Viacom 18 and the VOOT OTT platform had suffered a financial loss of more than Rs 100 crore. The court noted that there was ample material on record to show that a part of the proceeds of crime, ie Rs 13 crore, had been transferred to the account of the partnership firm of the applicants, and rejected the plea.
