The Karnataka High Court on Wednesday issued a notice to the Enforcement Directorate regarding the arrest of Chitradurga MLA K C Veerendra Puppy of the Congress over alleged involvement with illegal online and offline betting.
His wife, R D Chaitra, had approached the court with a petition against his arrest from Gangtok on August 23. The matter is being heard by a Bench consisting of Justice M I Arun.
Chaitra’s petition calls for the arrest of Puppy, considered a close associate of Deputy Chief Minister D K Shivakumar, to be declared illegal and violative of his fundamental rights, and thereby directs him to be released. In the interim pending this final order, it also requests a stay on the arrest and his release from custody. The petition also argues that Veerendra Puppy was not associated with any of the alleged companies, and neither were they registered in his name.
The ED had arrested Puppy on August 23 while he was on a business visit to Gangtok, pursuant to an Enforcement Case Information Report against him. There had also been searches at 31 locations linked to him and his associates, including five casinos in Goa. The ED had stated that Puppy was running several gambling sites while his brother was operating three business entities from Dubai that were related to Puppy’s call centre and gaming business, with a suspicion against several more Dubai-based entities.
On Wednesday, the ED said that it had seized six Mercedes-Benz cars, of which five had the VIP number 0003, and frozen Rs 55 crore. This allegedly included Rs 14.46 crore in 262 “mule” accounts through which money from the gaming websites was routed.
The original searches against Puppy and his associates on August 22 and 23 had already resulted in seizures, including Rs 12 crore in cash, Rs 6 crore in gold ornaments, four vehicles, and 10 kilograms of silver items. The ED also alleged that the money through a single gateway for the gaming websites operated by Puppy and his associates exceeded Rs 2,000 crore.
In 2016, the CBI had arrested Puppy, the son-in-law of Kannada actor Doddanna, for alleged money laundering during demonetisation, with the seizure of Rs 5.7 crore in new notes from his house in Chitradurga by Income Tax officials. The case was later closed due to a lack of evidence regarding an illegal source of funds.
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The case is listed to be heard further on September 8.