When Chhattisgarh voted in the 2023 Assembly election, the Mahadev betting app investigation had become one of the BJP’s most powerful political weapons against the Congress government led by Bhupesh Baghel. Enforcement Directorate (ED) raids, allegations of political payoffs and a steady stream of developments in the probe reinforced the BJP’s claims that the Congress-led State government had patronised the illegal betting syndicate.
Three years later, on July 14, the ED arrested Delhi-based businessman Vikas Garg under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA). Garg, chairman of the Ebix Group and son of senior BJP leader and Delhi MLA Nand Kishor Garg, had been serving as national convenor of the BJP’s Economic Cell.
With Garg’s arrest, the ED has now apprehended 14 people in the case. The agency alleges he laundered proceeds generated by the Mahadev Online Book and Skyexchange betting syndicates through shell companies, listed firms and overseas investment structures, and that these funds were used to acquire a controlling stake in the US-based technology company Ebix Inc. In June, it had provisionally attached assets worth about Rs.940.77 crore linked to Garg, his family members and companies allegedly under his control.
“Investigation has established that Vikas Garg continued to make attempts to conceal and move the Proceeds of Crime even during the course of investigation conducted against him,” a press note stated.
His arrest has reignited a political debate around a probe that played a significant role in the 2023 Chhattisgarh election. Throughout that campaign, the BJP repeatedly accused the Baghel government of shielding the betting syndicate. The Congress, in turn, maintained that it was its own government that had initiated action, registering FIRs, arresting suspects and freezing bank accounts.
A local case that went global
The Mahadev controversy began as an ordinary criminal investigation. In January 2023, the Chhattisgarh police started looking into illegal betting operations after the suicide of a habitual user in Durg, allegedly driven to distress by mounting gambling losses. What began as a local case soon revealed an international network.
The syndicate, allegedly founded by Bhilai natives Sourabh Chandrakar and Ravi Uppal, operated from Dubai through a franchise model that let operators across India run betting platforms under the Mahadev brand. Chandrakar was detained in Oman in early July on an Interpol Red Notice and India has begun extradition proceedings; Uppal remains at large. The ED estimates the syndicate’s illegal proceeds at over Rs.6,000 crore, allegedly laundered through shell companies and layered transactions before being invested in businesses and assets in India and abroad.
Reacting to Garg’s arrest, Baghel said it was his own government that had first acted against the betting syndicate, registering around 72 FIRs, arresting hundreds of people and freezing thousands of bank accounts. He also asked why the Union government, which he said had the power to block such platforms, had failed to curb illegal betting operations running across jurisdictions.
The Chhattisgarh Economic Offences Wing (EOW), acting on an ED report, had named Baghel among the accused in an FIR in March 2024, while the State was still under BJP rule, the Congress having lost power in the 2023 election. The Chhattisgarh government referred the case to the CBI in August 2024, and the central agency has since carried out searches at Baghel’s residences as the investigation has proceeded.
The BJP, meanwhile, has distanced itself from Garg. Soon after his arrest, the party removed him as convenor of its Economic Cell. Delhi BJP spokesperson Pravin Shankar Kapoor said the legal action related solely to Garg’s private business dealings and had no connection with the party.
Investigation or election weapon?
Garg’s arrest neither weakens the allegations against Baghel and the other accused, nor does it establish any direct link between the scam and the BJP. Political analysts argue that the Mahadev probe carries implications well beyond the immediate fortunes of either party.
The first concerns governance. The scam has exposed gaps in financial oversight, cross-border enforcement and institutional tracking, showing how easily illicit money can move through digital apps, shell companies and overseas investment structures.
The second concerns the relationship between criminal investigations and electoral politics. In principle, investigating agencies serve a legal function while political parties serve a political one; in practice, the two frequently intersect. Once allegations enter public discourse, political analysts say, they quickly become material for social media campaigns and election messaging, outpacing the slower and more deliberate pace of the legal process.
Opposition parties have repeatedly accused the BJP-led Union government of deploying central investigative agencies in election-bound States to shape political narratives and weaken rivals.
Earlier controversies over the 2G spectrum allocation, coal block allotments and the Commonwealth Games similarly acquired outsized political significance before the legal process had run its course. Years later, several of the accused in the 2G case were acquitted, and courts in some coal block cases found the evidence insufficient for conviction. In the Commonwealth Games case, some officials and private contractors were convicted, but the more prominent political figures targeted by anti-corruption campaigners were not.
Ahead of the 2025 Delhi Assembly election, then Chief Minister and AAP national convenor Arvind Kejriwal was arrested in the excise policy case. A little over a year after the BJP returned to power in the capital, a trial court discharged Kejriwal and the other accused in February 2026, ruling that the CBI’s case could not survive judicial scrutiny. The CBI has since challenged that order before the Delhi High Court.
While the larger legal questions at the heart of the Mahadev scam remain unresolved, Garg’s arrest has complicated the political narrative around it. It points to a broader feature of contemporary Indian politics, in which criminal investigations increasingly acquire an electoral life ahead of crucial elections. A probe that was once one of the BJP’s most effective campaign weapons in the 2023 Chhattisgarh election has now begun to raise uncomfortable questions for the ruling party itself. The courts alone will determine criminal liability. But the Mahadev probe has already shown that once a criminal investigation becomes an election issue, its political life often runs ahead of, and sometimes outlasts, the judicial process.
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