Bail plea of Anubhav Mittal, two others rejected

The Gautam Buddh Nagar Chief Judicial Magistrate Court on Wednesday rejected the bail plea of all three accused in the Rs 3,700 crore 'like' scam.

A petition was filed in the CJM Court on Tuesday which it rejected and all the three accused are still under police custody. Those arrested by the police include the Managing Director of Ablaze Info Solutions Limited, Anubhav Mittal, and his partners Shreedhar Prasad and Mahesh Dayal. Mittal and his firm are accused of swindling Rs 3,700 crore from around seven lakh investors.

Mittal's firm offered money to individuals for liking particular posts on social media. A petition was filed in the Court on Tuesday, demanding bail for the accused, following which the Court asked the investigation team to present their report. Keeping in mind the demand for more time for investigation by the officials, the Court rejected the bail plea of all the accused.

Socialtrade.biz was a business venture run by Ablaze. The website functioned similar to a social networking website, where a user who registered would get an ID. For registration, one needs to pay in four slabs of Rs 5,750, Rs 11,500, Rs 28,750 and Rs 57,500. The members then start getting links of certain pages for which they were paid Rs 5 for liking each link. If anyone wanted to promote a business, links of their website would be sent to members for increasing hits and likes. UP Special Task Force busted the racket on February 2 and arrested the three accused.