Businessman Raj Kundra, husband of actor and businesswoman Shilpa Shetty, was arrested by the Mumbai Police on Monday in connection with a pornography racket. Kundra who is currently in custody till 23rd July is likely to face more trouble in the coming days. Now, according to a report in The Times Of India, the Crime Branch has come across a bank transfer into Raj Kundra's account made by the Hotshot mobile app. The last transaction reportedly between the two accounts are as of January 2021, a month before a case was filed against Kundra, and the arrest of Gehana Vasisth, who is now found to have been operating the mobile app account took place. Speaking about the case in nutshell, in February, this year, the Mumbai police said they had arrested five people for allegedly forcing women into porn movies. They would promise these aspiring actresses, who came to Mumbai from various parts of the country, roles in web series. However, on the day of the shoot, they would change the script and threaten the women to expose themselves. If the women refused, they were asked to foot the bill for the shooting preparations.
Once the movies were shot, the accused made them available on mobile apps, offering subscriptions on the lines of mainstream OTT platforms. They would then put up advertisements on social media platforms. Since pornography is illegal in India, this too was against the law. According to the police, it would normally be a daylong shoot at a rented bungalow on the outskirts of Mumbai, like Madh Island. There would be minimal staff of five to six people who would double up as directors, dialogue writers, locations scouters and web app developers. These apps became especially popular during the lockdown, with some having a subscriber base in lakhs, said the police. There were two aspects of the police probe. One was nabbing those who produced these porn shows and the other focused on those who broadcast these clips. Some of these production houses broadcast from servers outside the country. One such UK production house, found to be uploading such content, came under the police scanner and its executive Umesk Kamat was arrested. An officer said that it was Kundra’s alleged connection to Kamat and the company that uploaded such pornographic content that landed him in trouble.