The High Court of Karnataka on Tuesday said that the arrests of three founders of online gaming platform Gameskraft by the ED were illegal and ordered their immediate release.
The Enforcement Directorate arrested the trio on May 8 in an alleged fraud-linked money laundering case. Deepak Singh, Prithvi Raj Singh and Vikas Taneja were taken into custody under the provisions of the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA).
Justice M Nagaprasanna passed the order while allowing the trio's petitions challenging their arrest.
The arrests followed the central agency filing a money laundering case against Gameskraft Technologies Ltd and other associated entities taking cognisance of multiple police FIRs related to alleged cheating and fraud.
The ED also conducted raids in May at 17 locations in Delhi-NCR and Karnataka leading to the seizure of certain documents.
The platform, as per ED officials, ran and owns various online real-money games like 'RummyCulture', rummytime app etc.
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 in ED custody and subsequently in judicial custody.
