Four employees of actor Shilpa Shetty’s husband and businessman Raj Kundra have turned witnesses in the case involving production and distribution of pornographic films.
The employees told police that they were asked to delete clips, NDTV reported quoting sources.
The employees reportedly confirmed that the clips were uploaded from “HotShots”, the controversial app owned by Kundra that the police believe was used for streaming porn.
The app was removed from the Google Play Store for Android phones and Apple’s App Store and then the accused “activated Plan B” by launching another app, Bollyfame, said police.
Raj Kundra, 45, was arrested by the Mumbai Police on July 19.
A magistrate’s court sent him to police custody till July 27. A day after his arrest, a lot of data was deleted from the records, said police.
He was arrested along with his aide Ryan Thorpe. Police told the court that they have seized a huge cache of pornographic images and videos- around 48 TB, according to an NDTV report.
Police had recovered 51 clips from the laptop seized, the report said, adding that 31 of them were those streamed on Hotshots app.
Further, police have found transactions between a Yes Bank account in Raj Kundra’s name to one in the United Bank of Africa. They suspect that the money from the sale of pornographic content was used for online betting and so far Rs 7.5 crore has been seized, the NDTV report said.
Kundra’s lawyer Abad Ponda had argued that the content seized can come under Section 292 of the Indian Penal Code that pertains to “lascivious” material, he said, adding “no further custody is needed”, said the report.
He contended Kundra cannot be charged under Section 67 of the IT Act – for which bail is not allowed, as similar content is available on OTT platforms like Netflix and Amazon Prime.
His wife Shilpa Shetty had defended her husband and said she was not aware of the exact nature of the content.
Shilpa Shetty claimed that another accused, London-based Pradeep Bakshi, who is also her husband’s brother-in-law, was involved with the app.
She also asserted that ‘erotica’ and ‘pornography’ were different, and Raj Kundra was not involved in producing pornographic content.
