Raj Kundra, others charged in porn row
Cyber police say they created and distributed adult content for cash
Businessman Raj Kundra — husband of Bollywood actress Shilpa Shetty — and others have been charged with making pornographic content in a couple of deluxe hotels, which were then distributed by OTT platforms for monetary gains, the Maharashtra Cyber Police have said.
Kundra, along with models Sherlyn Chopra and Poonam Pandey, film producer Meeta Jhunjhunwala and cameraman Raju Dubey allegedly shot the videos in two suburban fivestar hotels, as per the Cyber Police’s chargesheet filed before a court last week.
In 2021, the Mumbai Police Crime Branch had filed its separate charge sheet in April, followed by a supplementary charge sheet in September in the sensational pornographic racket case that came to light after a raid at a bungalow in Madh Island bungalow in February of that year.
The Cyber Police, which had filed a case in 2019, have claimed that Kundra, Director of Armsprime Media Ltd. was engaged in producing and distributing obscene videos on certain websites. In the 450-page charge sheet, others named include Banana Prime OTT’s Suvajit Choudhary, and a staff member of Kundra, Umesh Kamath, for allegedly producing a web series called Prem Paglani containing porn content that was uploaded on the OTT platform.
Pandey is also accused of developing her own mobile app, The Poonam Pandey, getting videos shot, uploading and circulating them with the help of Kundra’s company.
According to the Cyber Police, Dubey had also shot Chopra’s videos, while Jhunjhunwala is accused of aiding and abetting by scripting and directing stories for Chopra.
The Cyber Police has claimed that Kundra’s company “aided and abetted the crime” as it derived financial benefits from all the other co-accused though aware that such things are illegal, even as they are on the lookout for some other “missing” models who acted in the porn videos or web series.
After the high-profile case was exposed in the swoop by the Mumbai Police Crime Branch, in which several of the accused were nabbed, Kundra was sent to two months custody before getting bail in September 2021.
The other accused included Ryan Thorpe, the IT chief of Kundra’s firm, Viaan Enterprises; Yash Thakur alias Arvind Shrivastav, who is believed to be living in Singapore; and Kundra’s brother-in-law Pradeep Bakshi, based in London, running companies Kenrin and HotShot.
The Mumbai Police, which accused Kundra of producing around 100 adult movies, had also frozen Thakur’s bank accounts with Rs6.50 crore in it, as per its supplementary charge sheet in September 2021.