Mumbai Crime Branch police have told the court that they have recovered 68 pornographic videos and other pornographic material from the laptop of Indian producer and businessman Raj Kandra.
The Bombay High Court on Monday heard a petition filed by Raj Kandra, husband of actress Shilpa Shetty, challenging her arrest. During the hearing, Raj Kandra's plea claimed that no proper action was taken in his arrest. The Mumbai Crime Branch in its reply told the court that they could not be silent spectators when the accused was destroying evidence.
Chief Public Prosecutor Aruna Pai told the court that a notice under Section 41A of the CRPC was presented to Raj Kandra and his accomplice Ryan Thorpe at the time of his arrest, which Kandra refused to accept.
The crime branch told the court that they had recovered 68 pornographic films and other pornographic material from Raj Kandra's laptop. In addition, Kandra had deleted his iCloud account. However, with the help of cyber experts, the crime branch has been able to obtain some emails from iCloud.
The public prosecutor also mentioned in the court the WhatsApp chat between Raj Kandra, his brother-in-law Pradeep Bakhshi and Thorpe in which they were discussing a platform called Boli Fame. In addition to the 68 pornographic videos, the Crime Branch cited a presentation on the app hot shots found on Kandra's laptop and claimed that he was running the app from his Mumbai office.
The presentation contained details of financial matters and marketing strategies, as well as scripts of alleged sexual content from laptops. The public prosecutor further told the court that he found 51 pornographic clips from Kandra's office which were deleted by Thorpe, who was in charge of Kandra's IT department. The crime branch added that Raj Kandra had a British passport.
On the other hand, Raj Kandra's lawyer defended his client, saying that if the hard disk and mobile phone were seized by the police, then how the evidence was destroyed. The catastrophe was not even mentioned in the tribunal. There were about 22 people present at the time of the Punch Nama, so why didn't anyone notice it at that time? The court reserved its decision after hearing the views of both the parties.
It should be noted that actress Shilpa Shetty's husband Raj Kandra has been arrested for making pornographic films and uploading them on a mobile app. However, he had challenged his arrest in the Bombay High Court.
