Raids, Arrests, Attachments And A High-Court Rebuke: The Chronology Of Gameskraft’s Descent Into India’s Largest Online-Gaming Money-Laundering Probe

According to the Enforcement Directorate (ED), its Bengaluru Zonal Office has provisionally attached assets worth approximately ₹442.35 crore under the PMLA in the RummyCulture case. The investigation concerns Gameskraft Technologies and RummyTime Technologies, which allegedly operated online real-money rummy platforms including RummyCulture, RummyPrime, Playship and RummyTime. ED alleges that the platforms used undisclosed BOTs, aggressive promotional strategies and restrictive withdrawal mechanisms, generating proceeds through 10–15% platform commissions. The agency says proceeds were subsequently routed through dividends, share buybacks and investments. Including earlier seizures, freezes and attachments, ED states that approximately ₹2,843 crore has been attached, frozen or seized so far.

The Gameskraft in Detail

The Enforcement Directorate’s Bengaluru Zonal Office moved again on 25 September 2026. Provisional Attachment Order No. 40/2026 froze movable and immovable assets valued at approximately ₹442.35 crore. The list included fixed-deposit balances, commercial shops, a villa and multiple residential properties held in the names of family members, private family trusts and various associated entities of the shareholders of Gameskraft Technologies Pvt. Ltd. With this single order the cumulative value of proceeds of crime attached, frozen and seized in the RummyCulture investigation climbed to ₹2,843 crore.

That figure is not abstract. It represents bank balances, mutual funds, convertible notes, equity shares, farmhouses, residential and commercial properties, cash and bullion that investigators say were the end product of years of platform commissions extracted from roughly three crore users.

The same press release that announced the September attachment also restated the core findings that had already driven earlier searches, freezes and a prosecution complaint: Gameskraft Technologies and RummyTime Technologies operated online real-money rummy platforms under brands including RummyCulture, RummyPrime, Playship and RummyTime; they charged commissions of 10 to 15 percent on amounts staked by users; a significant share of those users sat in Telangana, Andhra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu where real-money gaming was prohibited; and while the platforms publicly assured players that games were transparent, fair and free of automated opponents, bots—automated programs and algorithms—were systematically placed against genuine users without their knowledge or consent.

The resulting losses to players, according to the Directorate’s earlier quantification, reached approximately ₹1,154 crore. The companies, in turn, generated proceeds of crime in the form of those commissions, which investigators put at approximately ₹19,984 crore between financial year 2017-18 and 22 August 2025.

The September action did not appear in isolation. It followed a July 2026 provisional attachment of assets worth ₹1,906 crore and earlier freezes of movable assets valued at roughly ₹495 crore, together with the seizure of ₹11 lakh in cash and 2.30 kilograms of gold and diamond jewellery including bullion. The Directorate’s own arithmetic already treated the successive orders as cumulative rather than additive; the ₹2,843 crore figure therefore incorporates every prior freeze, seizure and attachment.

The searches that produced the documentary and digital backbone of the case began earlier. Between 7 and 14 May 2026, and again between 20 and 21 June 2026, ED teams entered the office premises of Gameskraft Technologies and the residential premises of its directors and key employees. They seized incriminating documents, digital devices and electronic records. Those materials, the agency stated, formed crucial evidence.

The May–June operations themselves were not the first contact. In November 2025 the Bengaluru Zonal Office had already conducted searches at Gameskraft and Nirdesa Networks offices in Bengaluru and Gurugram and at related residential premises. That earlier round was linked to complaints surrounding Pocket52, operated by Nirdesa Networks, and to allegations of manipulated outcomes, player collusion, technical glitches, withdrawal restrictions and lack of transparency. Electronic devices and substantial data backups were taken.

The November 2025 action also flagged more than ₹30 crore still sitting in escrow accounts after the Union government’s Promotion and Regulation of Online Gaming Act, 2025 forced the suspension of real-money operations; eight payout-related escrow accounts containing approximately ₹18.57 crore were frozen under Section 17(1A) of the PMLA on the ground that proceeds of crime had been parked there.

The predicate offences that allowed the Directorate to open and later re-open its money-laundering investigation came from Telangana. Three FIRs proved central. FIR No. 97/2026 at the Cyber Crime Police Station, Hyderabad, described a user who said he was drawn to RummyCulture and related platforms through calls, SMS messages and promotional material that presented the games as government-licensed skill-based platforms; he reported losses of approximately ₹53,080 and questioned the authenticity of certain players.

FIR No. 10/2026 at Kasipet Police Station recorded five complainants who claimed they had been induced through online advertisements to install RummyCulture and RummyTime, alleged misleading representations and application-related manipulation, and quantified aggregate wrongful loss at approximately ₹1.85 crore. FIR No. 330/2026 at the Cyber Crimes Police Station, Cyberabad, concerned a complainant who first encountered RummyCulture via a YouTube advertisement, subsequently lost approximately ₹40 lakh, and described suspected collusion among players, deposits exceeding stated limits, forced logouts and connectivity problems. These complaints supplied the scheduled offences under the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita that the Directorate required for its PMLA case.

On 8 May 2026 the agency arrested three directors and founders, Vikas Taneja, Prithvi Raj Singh and Deepak Singh Ahlawat, under Section 19 of the PMLA. The arrests followed the May searches. On 16 June 2026 the Karnataka High Court declared those arrests illegal, ordered the release of the three men, and criticised the manner in which the Directorate had relied on material that substantially overlapped with an earlier ECIR whose underlying Bengaluru police case had been closed.

The Court noted that a fresh ECIR had been registered on 23 February 2026 on the strength of the Telangana FIRs, yet the material used to justify the arrests largely recycled the earlier investigation; it further observed that summons under Section 50 of the PMLA had not been issued to the petitioners between registration of the new ECIR and the arrests. The ruling addressed the legality of the arrests, not the substance of the cheating or laundering allegations.

The Directorate continued its investigation. On 25 July 2026 it filed a prosecution complaint before the Special Court in Bengaluru against Gameskraft Technologies, RummyTime Technologies, the three founders and associated persons. The complaint alleged generation and laundering of proceeds of crime through the online real-money gaming operations.

The laundering architecture described by the Directorate is extensive. Proceeds generated as platform commissions were layered through dividend payments and share buybacks to shareholders. The same funds were then integrated into mutual funds, bonds, convertible notes, equity shares, movable assets and high-value immovable properties, including those held through family members, private family trusts and associated entities, thereby projecting them as untainted. The September 2026 attachment order specifically targeted assets already parked in those family and trust structures.

Parallel to the money-laundering trail runs a detailed account of how users were acquired, retained and, according to the Directorate, systematically disadvantaged. The companies spent approximately ₹1,035 crore on marketing and promotional campaigns. New users were lured with joining bonuses, referral incentives, free tournament entries and promotional rewards designed to encourage continuous gameplay and increased deposits.

Restrictive withdrawal mechanisms were imposed, including a withdrawal levy ranging from 5 to 10 percent in certain cases. Users were motivated to convert withdrawable balances into non-withdrawable “Game Cash” through “Super Booster” offers. Dormant users who had stopped playing after heavy losses were re-targeted with instant cash credits, promotional offers, push notifications, SMS campaigns and telemarketing calls. The Directorate characterised these practices as the creation of an addictive gaming environment that encouraged repeated wagering and thereby maximised platform commissions.

The bot allegation sits at the centre of the cheating narrative. Users were initially allowed to win and withdraw small amounts, building trust and prompting larger stakes. Bots were then deployed against them without disclosure. Internal records examined by investigators contained references to “BOT Revenue,” “BOT Loss” and “BOT Players.” The quantified user losses attributed to this practice stood at approximately ₹1,154 crore. The platforms simultaneously reached users in states that had banned real-money gaming; investigators stated that geolocation controls were circumvented so that a significant user base from Telangana, Andhra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu could continue to deposit and play.

These 2025–2026 developments did not emerge from a vacuum. Gameskraft Technologies Pvt. Ltd. was incorporated in 2017 and built its business around real-money online rummy. Its principal consumer-facing brand was RummyCulture; the wider group operated or was connected with RummyPrime, Playship, RummyTime, Gamezy and Pocket52 through different entities.

At its peak the company was valued at more than ₹17,000 crore and claimed a user base of roughly three crore. Its commercial model rested on users depositing money, competing for monetary winnings, and the platform extracting a 10–15 percent commission. Its legal defence historically rested on the proposition that rummy is predominantly a game of skill rather than gambling—an argument that became central to both its regulatory posture and its later GST confrontation.

That confrontation arrived in September 2022 when the Directorate General of GST Intelligence issued a show-cause notice proposing a tax demand of approximately ₹21,000 crore. Gameskraft had paid GST on its commission; the tax authorities treated the activity as betting and gambling, seeking 28 percent on the full value of stakes rather than on the platform fee alone. The company’s entire revenue for 2017–2022 was approximately ₹4,650 crore; the proposed demand therefore dwarfed its reported earnings.

In May 2023 the Karnataka High Court quashed the notices, holding that the online rummy games involved substantial skill and that the revenue authorities had incorrectly characterised the activity. The Union government appealed. On 10 January 2025 the Supreme Court stayed proceedings on the large GST show-cause notices while it considered the legal questions. On 27 May 2026 the Supreme Court set aside the Karnataka High Court’s 2023 judgment and restored the September 2022 show-cause notices.

The Court held that when money or money’s worth is staked on an uncertain outcome, the transaction can acquire the character of betting and gambling even if the underlying game contains substantial skill; online gaming activities involving stakes upon uncertain outcomes constitute betting and gambling for purposes of the GST framework. Gameskraft and the other assessees were permitted to file replies before the competent adjudicating authority, but the legal landscape that had once protected the company’s classification had fundamentally shifted.

While the GST litigation proceeded, an internal financial crisis erupted. In 2025 Gameskraft accused its former Group Chief Financial Officer Ramesh Prabhu of diverting approximately ₹231.39 crore between FY2020 and FY2025 into personal futures-and-options trading. The transactions were recorded in the company’s books as investments even though the funds were routed through an account controlled by Prabhu and used for F&O trading.

The company reported a write-off of approximately ₹270.43 crore in its FY2025 financial statements. The police case was registered on 9 September 2025. The allegations encompassed diversion of company money, unauthorised derivatives trading, falsification of records, creation of fake investment documentation, alteration of bank statements and misrepresentation of diverted money as investments. Prabhu’s own email account, later relied upon by the Directorate, described the company as managed by four founders—Vikas Taneja, Prithvi Raj Singh, Deepak Singh Ahlawat and Deepak Kumar Jha—and contained his version of events surrounding the 2019 Games24x7 dispute and a 2020 Bengaluru police raid.

That 2019 episode itself formed part of the company’s early legal history. Games24x7, operator of RummyCircle, complained to Mumbai Police that certain Gameskraft founders who had previously worked with Games24x7 had taken RummyCircle’s source code and customer database before establishing Gameskraft and launching RummyCulture. The FIR existed; the Directorate later referred to it while presenting background. In 2020 Bengaluru’s Central Crime Branch conducted a raid concerning allegations that Gameskraft was operating a gambling setup. According to Prabhu’s later statement, a gambling-related case was registered, he was arrested and spent two days in custody, and the matter was subsequently closed after a B-report was filed.

In August 2025, following the enactment of the Promotion and Regulation of Online Gaming Act, Gameskraft announced that it would suspend its real-money gaming operations and would not challenge the government’s ban in court. It said it would explore other areas of digital gaming. By the time the Directorate’s most intensive searches and attachments occurred, the company’s principal real-money business had already been shut down.

The corporate-governance questions that emerge from this chronology are unavoidable. A company that handled billions of rupees in user transactions allowed, according to its own complaint, more than ₹231 crore to be diverted over several financial years by its Group CFO, with the transactions presented in audited accounts as investments. The same company is now the subject of a PMLA prosecution that traces nearly ₹20,000 crore of commissions through dividends, buybacks and family trusts into properties and financial instruments that have been attached or frozen to the extent of ₹2,843 crore.

Internal records allegedly contained explicit references to bot-related revenue and losses. Users in banned states continued to play. Restrictive withdrawal rules and aggressive re-targeting of loss-making dormant accounts formed part of the documented retention architecture. The founders’ shareholding had shifted into family trusts and related structures—transfers the Directorate treated as relevant to the concealment of proceeds.

As of 29 September 2026 the real-money operations remain discontinued. The GST show-cause notices restored by the Supreme Court await adjudication. The prosecution complaint filed in July 2026 remains pending before the Special Court. The three founders whose arrests were declared illegal continue to face the broader PMLA case. The Directorate has indicated its intention to challenge the High Court ruling. Further investigation, the agency states, is under progress.

The scale of the numbers is itself the measure of the concern. A platform that once commanded a multi-thousand-crore valuation, that extracted commissions on stakes placed by three crore users, that spent more than ₹1,000 crore on acquisition and retention marketing, and that is now the subject of asset actions totalling ₹2,843 crore sits at the intersection of tax characterisation, internal financial control failure, regulatory prohibition, and the most serious allegations of user deception through undisclosed automated opponents.

The September 2026 attachment order is only the latest public marker in a sequence that began with source-code complaints in 2019, police action in 2020, a ₹21,000-crore GST notice in 2022, internal diversion complaints in 2025, searches in November 2025 and May–June 2026, arrests in May 2026, a High Court intervention in June, a prosecution complaint and major attachment in July, and the latest ₹442.35-crore order in September. Each step has expanded the documented financial and operational footprint that the Directorate is now systematically dismantling.