New Delhi: Vikas Garg, a national convenor for the Bharatiya Janata Party’s economic cell, is under the Enforcement Directorate’s scanner for his alleged involvement in the Mahadev Online Book/Skyexchange illegal online betting case.Garg was taken into custody on July 8 and the ED confirmed the charges against him in a statement issued on July 10, more than a year after it first raided his firms in April 2025 without publicly clarifying what the searches were about. The provisional attachment order said the ED had traced assets worth roughly Rs 940.77 crore to Garg, his family and his companies, describing them as proceeds from illegal betting operations that were “routed into the entities owned and controlled by Vikas Garg.” The assets reportedly include residential properties, land parcels, equity shares and other securities.Garg is being prosecuted under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA), 2002. He was appointed convenor of the BJP’s Delhi economic cell in August 2024, a position his social media profiles and the party’s own list of functionaries have confirmed. He is a promoter of several listed companies: Vikas Lifecare Limited and Vikas Ecotech Limited, both of which are chemical manufacturers listed on the National Stock Exchange; Ebix Limited, a global digital and financial exchanges firm listed on the Bombay Stock Exchange and Ebix Inc, which is listed on Nasdaq in the United States.The Mahadev caseMahadev Book is an mobile application with over a million users that describes itself as a “sports insights” platform. It is connected with Skyexchange, a Dubai-based online betting platform. Since 2022, central agencies have been investigating the app’s promoters, Sourabh Chandrakar and Ravi Uppal, over allegations of running an illegal betting syndicate and laundering its earnings through benami bank accounts, hawala networks and cryptocurrency. Some of the proceedings were allegedly used to manipulate stock prices in India.The case drew national attention in 2023, when the ED alleged that the promoters had paid nearly Rs 508 crore as pay-off to the then Chhattisgarh chief minister Bhupesh Baghel, who is affiliated with Congress. The investigation subsequently expanded to cover Indian firms, foreign institutional investors and Bollywood celebrities who had been previously linked to Chandrakar in 2023. As per a March 2026 press release by the ED, the agency has searched more than 175 premises, arrested 13 people, arraigned 74 people and frozen movable and immovable assets worth around Rs 4,336 crore in India and abroad.Garg’s alleged links to the case had, until recently, drawn much lesser attention and public scrutiny within the wider probe. However, according to a report by Scroll, Garg’s firms had acknowledged the ED investigation amid mandatory stock market disclosures in 2024.Kolkata-Dubai money trailAs per the Scroll report, National Stock Exchange filings show that Dubai-based Ecotech General Trading LLC held a 1.76% stake in Vikas Lifecare, amounting to nearly Rs 10 crore, by the end of 2022. By May 2023, five Kolkata-based firms – Brilliant Investment Consultants, Discovery Buildcon, Dream Achievers Consultancy Services, Forest Vincom and Sawarnbhumi Vanijya – had acquired close to 8% of Vikas Lifecare for approximately Rs 38 crore, while Sawarnbhumi individually held a stake worth roughly Rs 5 crore in Vikas Ecotech.The common director of the five Kolkata firms, Suraj Chokhani, was named by the ED in March 2024 as an associate of Hari Shankar Tibrewala, a Dubai-based businessman, whom the agency described as a “huge hawala operator,” owning and operating Skyexchange. All six companies have since appeared in ED documents, including a February 2024 freezing order and a list of 1,519 companies chargesheeted under PMLA that the finance ministry placed before the parliament in August 2024.Furthermore, a July 2025 report by India Today, said the ED suspected Tibrewala’s overseas firms had used investments to inflate the valuations of companies linked to Garg. The agency has not yet confirmed this claim publicly and both Chokhani and Tibrewala have contested the allegations.BJP connectionGarg has been consistently linked to and photographed with senior BJP leaders, including Union Home Minister Amit Shah, Parliamentary Affairs Minister Kiren Rijiju, former Union minister Anurag Thakur, Lok Sabha Speaker Om Birla and the former Delhi chief ministerial candidate Manoj Tiwari. In September 2025, he also met with Harsh Malhotra, then Union minister of state for corporate affairs to reportedly discuss the functioning of BJP’s economic cell, as per Scroll. Garg also hails from a BJP-linked political family. His father, Nand Kishor Garg, has previously been elected three times from Delhi’s Trinagar constituency on a BJP ticket.Garg denies wrongdoingGarg’s firms have denied allegations in their annual reports. According to Scroll, Vikas Lifecare had disclosed the ED’s proceedings in its 2024-2025 annual report and said it planned to seek a high court order to quash the case, however, no such petition could be found on the Delhi high court’s e-courts portal. Court records instead showed that Garg moved the PMLA’s appellate tribunal against ED’s Raipur branch, which is handling the Mahadev online betting case.Later disclosures in June 2026 flagged attachments of Rs 13 crore in immovable property to Vikas Lifecare, with the company claiming that its parent entity was “neither involved in nor a beneficiary” of the activities cited in the investigation. Garg’s lawyers, in response to Scroll’s queries, said the matter was sub judice and that Garg had “not been convicted of any offence.”Baghel demands probe into BJP officialsIn response to Garg’s arrest, in an interview with ABP news on Wednesday (July 15), Baghel demanded a probe against Navneet Sehgal and Hiren Joshi, the latter of whom was a prominent official serving in the prime minister’s office. Claiming that members of the ruling party are complicit in the case, Baghel asked about Joshi’s whereabouts and called attention to his alleged past role in shaping media headlines through WhatsApp messages.When questioned about the 2023 assembly elections in Chattisgarh, he alleged that due to the polls’ proximity, the central government deliberately conducted Central Bureau of Investigation raids at his premises to defame him.@bhupeshbaghel on the arrest of Delhi BJP leader Vikas Garg in the Mahadev betting app case: “I demand that there is a probe against Navneet Sehgal and Hiren Joshi, who used to be a powerful PMO bureaucrat, whose Whatsapp messages decided headlines, where is he these days?” pic.twitter.com/8eQCPipNUG— Ayush Tiwari (@sighyush) July 15, 2026Meanwhile, the investigation’s prime accused remain outside the reach of Indian courts. Though Uppal was arrested by the United Arab Emirates police in December 2023, he reportedly fled custody in November 2025. Chandrakar was detained in Oman last week and the Indian government is currently trying to get him extradited or deported to India.