Ponzi Mittal’s wife sent to judicial custody, faces over 200 cases

NOIDA: Ayushi Mittal, wife of Anubhav Mittal, the alleged mastermind in one of the biggest Ponzi cases seen in recent years, was produced in court on Thursday after four days of transit remand. The SIT interrogated her role in the scam as she was a co-accused in the case. Ayushi was co-director of Ablaze Info Solutions Pvt Ltd, the company Mittal floated to run the scam.
Preeti Bala Gupta, SP (crime), Gautam Budh Nagar, said the SIT team arrested Ayushi from Pune on December 25, 10 months after her husband’s arrest. She was produced in a local court there and taken to transit remand in Noida. “The court had given us time for transit remand till Thursday. Following the court order, we produced her at a CJM court in Ghaziabad. She was sent to judicial custody,” Gupta said.
He further said Ayushi had got a stay from the Allahabad HC against her arrest in cases filed against her in Noida. “However, three cases of cheating and fraudulent activities were filed against her in Ghaziabad. She had no stay on those cases. We arrested her in connection with these cases and produced her in the Ghaziabad court,” she said.
The STF teams had earlier arrested Ablaze Info Solutions’ director Anubhav Mittal, CEO Shridhar Prasad, technical head Mahesh Dayal, a private bank official Atul Kumar Mishra, Anubhav’s father Suneel Mittal and two other accomplices – Pramod Kumar Solanki and Pramod Kumar Vimal.
Ayushi, a resident of Pilukhwa in Hapur, was arrested from her cousin’s flat in Sai Ganga society in Kondhwa in Pune. Police said there are around 200 cases filed against her in Noida, Ghaziabad, Uttarakhand, Telangana, Rajasthan, Karnataka, Harayana, among others.
In 2015, the accused urged people to join a pyramid scheme and earn while sitting at home through their company. They took on people with subscription money ranging from Rs 5,750, Rs 11,500, Rs 28,750 and Rs 57,500. The investors were given a user ID and password. They were told that they would get some random URL links on their phone and would be paid Rs 5 per ‘like’. The fraud came to light when some people alleged that they had not received the money even after clicking on the URLs.
Based on their complaint, an FIR was registered at Surajpur police station and the accused were arrested. Officers investigating the matter estimated the scale of the scam at Rs 3,700 crore.