In the past few days back, the OTT scam case has come to light, shocking the industry circles. And yesterday, a significant development took place after the third arrest was made in this case. Akshat Raj Saluja was nabbed by the cyber crime police for his alleged involvement in this case.

Akshat is an actor, who has worked in films like 31st October (2016), PM Narendra Modi (2019) etc. Also known simply as Raj Saluja, he was the associate producer of Ayushmann Khurrana-starrer Dream Girl (2019) and the writer of Aditya Roy Kapur’s recent release, Rashtra Kavach Om (2022) as well the web series, Shiksha Mandal. As per his IMDb profile, he has also written the upcoming Sunny Deol-Mithun Chakraborty-Jackie Shroff starrer, Baap. According to his LinkedIn profile, he’s the managing director of ThinkInk Picturez Limited, run by Dream Girl director, Raaj Shaandilyaa.

This matter came to light when a producer, Maan Singh, filed a complaint. He met one Rajat Kumar Mourya who claimed that he’ll help him sell his film on OTT platforms. He also mentioned that he’ll charge Rs. 10 lakhs per film sold on digital. Maan Singh agreed after Rajat showed him certificates, purportedly from OTT platforms, of the films that he helped release. In January 2021, he showed Maan Singh a letter of intent from Panorama Studios and claimed that the studio, known for making films like Drishyam, Pyaar Ka Punchnama, and Raid etc. is interested to buy his film for Rs. 4 crores.

This prompted Maan Singh to begin work on his film, titled MD Platinum. Rajat Kumar Mourya, from hereon, took Rs. 2.50 lakhs as a token amount and later Rs. 1.50 lakhs, citing that he needed to pay the amount to an official of Panorama Studios. Under previous pretexts, Rajat kept usurping money from Maan. The producer ended up paying Rs. 48 lakhs after which he realized he was conned.

Once the complaint was filed, the police arrested Rajat Kumar Mourya. Soon, one Sanjay Saha was also held for their involvement. And finally, Akshat Raj Saluja, too, got arrested for cheating, forgery, and breach of trust under the Indian Penal Code as well as under the Information Technology Act. The police claimed that Saluja was paid Rs. 7.50 lakh of Rs 48 lakh extracted from Singh. He was produced before the Borivali court, which remanded him to police custody.

Interestingly, according to Maan Singh’s complaint, Rajat Kumar Mourya had suggested that he should hire Akshat Raj Saluja to rewrite his film, MD Platinum, and make it better. For this, he had taken Rs. 5.50 lakhs from Maan.

According to reports, Maan Singh was not the only person conned by this gang. Producer Gaurang Doshi, of Aankhen (2002) fame and actor Vivek Oberoi were also targeted. As per an article in Hindustan Times, both have filed FIR against them for cheating.

Gaurang Doshi admitted in this article that he felt ‘stupid’ for realizing the con after a year. He also revealed that it was Vivek Oberoi who had introduced him to the gang. While Gaurang Doshi lost Rs. 1 crore, Vivek Oberoi was cheated of Rs. 2-3 crores. Finally, Gaurang Doshi also said that the gang members dropped the name of actors like Shah Rukh Khan, Nawazuddin Siddiqui, etc to usurp money.