Karnataka HC says ED acted illegally in arresting Gameskraft founders, orders immediate release

The Karnataka High Court on Tuesday said the ED’s arrest of three founders of online gaming platform Gameskraft was illegal and ordered their immediate release.

The Enforcement Directorate arrested the trio on May 8 in a money laundering case allegedly linked to the fraud. Deepak Singh, Prithvi Raj Singh and Vikas Taneja were detained under the provisions of the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA).

Justice M Nagaprasanna upheld the verdict while allowing the trio’s petitions challenging their detention.

The arrests came after the central agency filed a money laundering case against Gameskraft Technologies Ltd and other related entities in view of multiple police FIRs regarding allegations of cheating and fraud.

The ED also conducted raids at 17 locations in Delhi-NCR and Karnataka in May and seized some documents.

According to ED officials, the platform includes ‘RummyCulture’, rummytime app etc. operates and owns various online real money games such as.

While Deepak Singh and Prithvi Raj Singh were arrested from the Delhi-NCR region, Taneja was arrested from Bengaluru. They were produced before a court in Bengaluru, which remanded them to ED custody and subsequently remanded them to judicial custody.