ED seizures and Kolkata Police chargesheet in E-Nuggets case

What the Record Shows

The Enforcement Directorate and the Kolkata Police cyber wing have moved against the operators of a mobile gaming application marketed as E-Nuggets, an action that the agencies say began with suspicious bank transactions traced to Garden Reach in Kolkata. The person named as the principal accused is Aamir Khan, a Garden Reach businessman who should not be confused with the film actor of the same name. Two others named in the action, Subhojeet Srimani and Sumit Sil, were reported by the agencies as absconding.

On 10 September 2022 the ED searched six premises linked to the case and, per the agency's account, seized Rs 17.32 crore in cash from a single Garden Reach property, a count that officials said took roughly thirteen hours to complete. The ED has put cumulative seizures at about Rs 68.42 crore, a figure it says includes around Rs 32 crore frozen in bank accounts and Rs 14.53 crore held in cryptocurrency, with roughly 1,737 bank accounts sealed in the course of the investigation.

The criminal process has moved through the courts. A special court dealing with cases under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act, 2002 remanded Aamir Khan to fourteen days' ED custody on 27 November 2022, and the Kolkata Police filed a chargesheet before the Bankshall Court on 20 December 2022. The matter later reached the Calcutta High Court, which on 8 June 2023 dismissed as not pressed a revisional application connected to the case, in a proceeding recorded as Aamir Khan alias Amir Khan versus Directorate of Enforcement. No court has recorded a conviction; the accused are, at this stage, persons the agencies have charged and are prosecuting.

How It Worked

The mechanism described by the investigators follows a pattern that the chargesheet sets out in stages. According to the chargesheet, the application was presented to the public as an ordinary gaming platform on which users deposited money and could win and withdraw sums. In the early phase, the chargesheet alleges, users were allowed to withdraw their winnings, which built confidence and encouraged larger and more frequent deposits.

The turn, as the agencies allege, came once deposits reached scale. The chargesheet alleges that the withdrawal facility was then blocked and that the application's profile was removed from users' devices, leaving depositors without access either to their balances or to the platform itself. Investigators have said the design left ordinary users with little recourse once the money had moved on.

On the movement of funds, the ED alleges that collections were fanned out across roughly 150 bank accounts spread around the country before being consolidated into a smaller set of beneficiary accounts in Kolkata and Rajarhat. Part of the value, the ED alleges, was then converted into cryptocurrency, which is consistent with the Rs 14.53 crore in crypto assets the agency says it identified. The ED's case is that this layering was intended to distance the proceeds from their source, and the money-laundering allegation rests on that characterisation of how the cash was routed.

The procedural spine of the case runs from a predicate police complaint in Kolkata to the registration of a money-laundering investigation by the ED, followed by searches, the cash seizure of 10 September 2022, the custody order of 27 November 2022 and the chargesheet of 20 December 2022. Each of these is a step in an investigation and prosecution that a trial court has yet to test on evidence.

Who Lost Money

The people affected, on the agencies' account, were retail users of the application, described as thousands of largely small-ticket depositors rather than a small circle of large investors. That profile matters: the alleged harm was spread thin across many individuals, each of whom is said to have put in modest sums, which is often why such matters surface slowly and are hard to reconstruct account by account.

The headline seizure figures are not the same as recovered money returned to users. The ED has said it seized Rs 17.32 crore in cash and identified around Rs 68.42 crore in total across cash, frozen bank balances and cryptocurrency. Seized and frozen assets remain subject to the legal process; they are not, at this stage, distributions to depositors. Whether and how much of the frozen value ultimately reaches identified users depends on the outcome of the prosecution and on any attachment and restitution steps that follow.

As of the records reviewed for this report, there is no published account of a completed distribution to the app's users. Depositors who believe they were affected are placed, in practice, in the position of waiting for the criminal and asset-recovery process to run its course, a reality common to platform-economy cases where funds are dispersed across many accounts before enforcement begins.

Where It Stands Now

The current position, on the record available today, is that the case sits at the trial stage. The Kolkata Police chargesheet was filed at the Bankshall Court on 20 December 2022, and the Calcutta High Court's order of 8 June 2023 disposed of a revisional application by dismissing it as not pressed rather than by deciding the merits of the allegations. That order confirms the existence of the ED's proceeding against Aamir Khan alias Amir Khan but does not amount to a finding on the substance of the case.

No conviction has been recorded against any of the accused in this matter, and two of the persons named were reported as absconding. The ED's investigation under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act continues alongside the police prosecution, and the seized and frozen assets remain within that process.

A chargesheet contains allegations, not findings of guilt; the accused are presumed innocent until proven guilty, and due process continues. Nothing in the agencies' seizures or in the pending prosecution displaces that presumption, and the figures cited here are the agencies' own claims, not facts established by a court.

What It Means

The value of this case for an ordinary reader is not in its scale but in what it shows about the plumbing. The agencies' own account is of a neighbourhood-level operator who is alleged to have moved bulk cash and crypto through some 1,737 bank accounts without any professional gatekeeper in the chain. That is a story about how thin the account-opening and monitoring layer can be, and about how a platform that behaves normally at first can change its behaviour once enough money has arrived.

The single practical takeaway is verification before deposit. A gaming or returns application is only as trustworthy as the regulated entity, if any, standing behind it, and the ability to withdraw a small sum early is not evidence that a platform is sound. Readers can check whether a scheme or intermediary is registered with the relevant regulator before committing money, and can treat a platform that later restricts withdrawals as a signal to stop adding funds and to preserve records. For a sense of how the same money behaves inside a regulated, transparent instrument, our lumpsum investment calculator shows the arithmetic without any of the platform risk described here. The wider archive of enforcement matters is collected at Oquilia's enforcement coverage, and readers following how bail and custody play out in comparable cases may find our report on the Kerala High Court's refusal of bail in the half-price CSR case a useful companion.

FAQ

Does this mean the people named are guilty?

No. A chargesheet contains allegations, not findings of guilt. The persons named, including Aamir Khan of Garden Reach, are accused and are presumed innocent until proven guilty by a court, and the ED's investigation and the police prosecution are still under way. The seizure figures are the agencies' claims and have not been tested at trial.

What exactly did the agencies do?

The Kolkata Police cyber wing filed a chargesheet before the Bankshall Court on 20 December 2022, and the Enforcement Directorate registered a money-laundering investigation, searched six premises on 10 September 2022, seized Rs 17.32 crore in cash and froze bank and cryptocurrency assets it puts at about Rs 68.42 crore in total.

Is this the film actor Aamir Khan?

No. The Aamir Khan named in this case is a businessman from Garden Reach in Kolkata. He is a different person from the film actor of the same name, who has no connection to the matter.

Have the app's users got their money back?

There is no published record of a completed distribution to users. Seized cash and frozen bank and crypto balances remain within the legal process; whether users recover any part depends on the outcome of the prosecution and any attachment and restitution steps that follow.

How do I check whether a scheme or platform is registered?

Verify the operator against the relevant regulator's public register before depositing money, for example SEBI's list of registered intermediaries or the Reserve Bank of India's list of authorised entities. The ability to withdraw a small amount early is not proof that a platform is legitimate.

Where can I read the official record?

The Calcutta High Court order in Aamir Khan alias Amir Khan versus Directorate of Enforcement is published on Indian Kanoon and is linked below.

This report is based on the order of the Calcutta High Court dated 8 June 2023 in Aamir Khan alias Amir Khan versus Directorate of Enforcement and the agencies' announced seizure figures, reviewed on 2 August 2026.