Today in Supreme Court the bench of Justices Rohinton Fali Nariman and Vineet Saran adjourned the hearing in Vihaan Direct Selling Pvt Ltd v. Union Of India, a matter pertaining to the investigations against Vihaan Direct Selling, the Indian franchisee of QNet, who are involved in cheating and fraud of more than 3 lakh people by floating illegal money circulation scheme with binary enrolment. The estimate of the fraud is more than Rs 10,000 crore according to police figures, and still counting.
Cyberabad Police filed multiple Criminal cases against Vihaan Direct Selling India Pvt. Ltd, Bengaluru. Vihaan moved Telangana High Court where they didn’t get any stay on the investigation against them. Even they didn’t get any stay on filing of Fresh cases against them. Vihaan moved Supreme Court seeking relief.
The Supreme Court had issued a notice to the Cyberabad Police in Telangana on a contempt plea alleging violation of its orders of ‘no-coercive action’ as arrests were made of independent representatives of e-commerce company QNet by the Cyberabad Police on allegation of running a ponzi scheme. Apex Court had issued a notice and sought a response from the state government. The top court had also dispensed the presence of alleged contemnors and tagged the contempt petition with other pending matters for final disposal.
The QNet Distributors Welfare Association had filed a petition before the Telangana High Court alleging that state police authorities were not following the state’s notification on the Direct Selling Guidelines, 2017, and were indiscriminately registering criminal cases against the independent representatives of QNet’s Indian sub-franchisee Vihaan Direct Selling (India) Pvt. Ltd. The franchisee claimed that the state guidelines were issued pursuant to an advisory issued by the central government’s Department of Consumer Affairs.
The High Court on February 6 had ordered the Telangana government, the Hyderabad Police Commissioner, and the Cyberabad Police Commissioner, to refrain from taking any action against the distributors of QNet. It said QNet’s business is operating in India under the franchisee company Vihaan Direct Selling is in full compliance with the guidelines issued by Union Ministry of Consumer Affairs.
“The action taken by the police has no civil and criminal law conformance and is in direct contempt of the order of the Supreme Court of India that has directed all states including the state of Telangana to not take any coercive action against the company,” the order said.
— India Legal Bureau