Mumbai police claims sufficient material available to prosecute Raj Kundra in porn app case

|HT|

The Mumbai police have objected to the discharge plea filed by Raj Kundra claiming that sufficient material is available to establish a prima facie case against businessman Raj Kundra, accused of developing a mobile application to air pornographic content to paid subscribers.

Kundra approached the magistrate court on August 20 seeking discharge from the case, claiming that there was no financial link, direct or indirect, between him and the sale of pornographic material over the application called Hotshots.

On Thursday, the prosecution said that the grounds raised by Kundra’s lawyers were not enough to discharge him. It told the court that a mobile phone seized from co-accused Umesh Kamat revealed that Kundra had created three WhatsApp groups to handle operations of the mobile application, HS Accounts, HS TakeDown and HS Operations.

“In the said group, accused number 10 (Kundra) instructed other members about contents of the films, remuneration for actors and the revenue expected from the app,” said the prosecution’s hand-written reply.

The prosecution also relied on Kundra’s business associate Sourabh Kushwah’s statement. “From the statement of Kushwah, it is clear that it was the duty of Arms Prime Media Pvt Ltd to upload content on Hotshots, but Kundra entrusted the duty/work to Kamat and Ryan Thorpe who were not concerned with Arms Prime Media Pvt ltd,” it stated.

Kundra and Kushwah were directors in Arms Prime Media Pvt Ltd. Thorpe was Kundra’s IT support provider. As per the prosecution, Thorpe created the alleged app upon Kundra’s instruction. The prosecution said that the app was transferred from Arms Prime to Kenrin Ltd in December 2019.

Further, the prosecution told the court that Kundra’s employee, Umesh Kamat received sexually explicit content from producers and directors across India and he would send that to Kenrin’s London-based office over email, marking a copy to Kundra.

The court has scheduled the next date of hearing on Kundra’s discharge plea on September 23.

(Except for the headline and the pictorial description, this story has not been edited by THE DEN staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)