Shilpa Shetty's husband and business tycoon Raj Kundra's judicial custody has been extended till July 27. Kundra's aide Ryan Thorpe's custody has also been extended. They were arrested in a case of pornographic content shown through a mobile app.
Police told the court they had seized a massive cache – around 48 TB worth – of images and videos, which are mostly of adult content, from Raj Kundra.
51 clips, including 35 from 'Hotshots' – the app through which the content was streamed – were found on a laptop, and police are checking if all these clips were uploaded to the internet.
The court was also told some data had been deleted from other computers a day after Mr. Kundra was arrested, and that it would take a day to recover this. They have also asked for permission to investigate four e-mail accounts set up by Mr. Thorpe for the 'Hotshots' app, reported NDTV.
Police also said Mr. Kundra was working on a "plan B" after Google and Apple disabled 'Hotshots' from their digital stores for streaming pornographic content. They said he was creating a new platform – Bolifem – that would, eventually, again be listed on the Android and iOS stores.
In addition, police said they also had a record of transactions – from an account in Yes Bank registered to Mr Kundra to one in the United Bank of Africa. They suspect money from sale of alleged pornographic content was used for online betting. Rs. 7.5 crore has been seized so far.
Mr Kundra's lawyer, Abad Ponda, argued against police custody, pointing out his client could still be called to co-operate with the investigation as needed. He also repeated a point from a hearing earlier in the week – this content cannot come under Section 67 of the IT Act – for which bail is not allowed – as similar material is available on OTT platforms like Netflix and Amazon Prime.
