The ministry of electronics and information technology on Sunday issued the order to block the operations of the Mahadev betting app, reddyannaofficial. in, and 20 other apps and websites. These apps were blocked on request from the enforcement directorate, the government said.
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“The action follows investigations conducted by the Enforcement Directorate (ED) against illegal betting app syndicate and subsequent raids on Mahadev Book in Chhattisgarh, revealing the app’s unlawful operations,” the IT ministry said in a press release.
Earlier this year in September, the ED had seized assets worth Rs 417 crore in connection with the Mahadev online betting app The probe agency had then alleged that the company promoted by Sourabh Chandrakar and Ravi Uppal, was running operations from Dubai and made Rs 450 crore per month by offering illegal bets through a cache of online applications.
“Chhattisgarh Government had all the power to recommend shutting down of website/app under Sec 69A IT Act. However, they did not do so, and no such request is made by the State Government while they have been investigating it for the last 1.5 years,” the minister of state for electronics and information technology Rajeev Chandrasekhar said.
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ET had earlier reported that in its prosecution complaint (PC), which is equivalent to a charge sheet, the ED had alleged that the Mahadev app was running a franchise-type model in which the panel is outsourced in a 70-30% profit-sharing ratio.
In March this year, the IT ministry had issued similar orders to bar the operations of 138 betting and gambling apps on an “urgent” and “emergency” basis for “improper data storage and transfer” to other countries as well as money laundering.
A month later, the IT ministry amended the Information Technology Rules of 2021 to provide a framework for permissible and non-permissible online games. These rules moved away from the debate of games of skill and chance and outright said that any game which involved betting or wagering on the outcome of a situation would not be allowed to operate in India.
Over the last two years, the government has banned close to 400 gaming, gambling, betting, photo editing software, web browsers, and other apps and websites for either having links with China, or being involved in money laundering as well as improper storage of the data of Indian citizens.
The first of these bans came in 2020. The list of banned apps included popular short-video sharing apps such as TikTok and others such as WeChat and Helo. Nearly all the blocking orders issued to date have been under Section 69A of the Information Technology Act of 2000.
