Telangana High Court Shields Two QNET-Linked Vihaan Directors From Coercive Action in CBI Case

HYDERABAD, Telangana -- October 9, 2026

The Telangana High Court in India has directed the Central Bureau of Investigation not to take any coercive steps against two directors of Vihaan Direct Selling India Pvt Ltd, a company linked to QNET, in a case arising from the alleged suicide of a man from Siddipet.

Justice J Sreenivas Rao granted interim protection to directors Dilipraj Pukkella and Muhammad Imthiaz but declined to stay the proceedings. The court ordered the CBI to file its counter within four weeks and adjourned the matter for further hearing.

The case concerns the death of Badugu Harikrishna, who allegedly died by suicide in October 2025 after suffering financial losses tied to investments in QNET as well as online betting and gaming applications. Siddipet police first handled the investigation, which was later moved to the Telangana Crime Investigation Department and is now being pursued by the CBI.

The directors asked the court to quash the case and halt further proceedings. They argued that they were not named in the original complaint or the first information report and were added as accused only during the investigation, and that the CBI's FIR wrongly stated they had been named in the Siddipet case. They said the transactions under review were genuine product purchases rather than a money circulation scheme, and cited relief they had received from courts in earlier QNET-related cases registered by Hyderabad police, the Telangana CID and authorities in Karnataka.

Opposing the petition, the CBI said several cases had been registered against the firm in different parts of the country and alleged that the company and its directors were involved in a multi-crore scam. T Srujan Kumar Reddy, special public prosecutor for the CBI, told the court that the petitioners were not cooperating, that the agency had been unable to trace them since the case was transferred to it in September, and that granting relief would hurt the investigation.