Hyderabad: Telangana high court has directed CBI not to take any coercive steps against two directors of Vihaan Direct Selling India Pvt Ltd, linked to QNet investment schemes, in a case arising from the alleged suicide of a Siddipet man. While granting interim protection, the court refused to stay the proceedings and sought the agency’s response.A bench of Justice J Sreenivas Rao directed the CBI not to take coercive action against Dilipraj Pukkella and Muhammad Imthiaz, directors of Vihaan Pvt, and ordered the CBI to file its counter within four weeks. The matter was adjourned for further hearing.The case relates to the death of Badugu Harikrishna, who allegedly died by suicide in Oct 2025 after suffering financial losses from investments in QNet, online betting and gaming applications. The investigation, initially handled by Siddipet police, was later transferred to the Telangana CID and is currently being probed by the CBI.The petitioners sought quashing of the case and a stay on further proceedings. Opposing the plea, the CBI argued that 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, submitted that the petitioners were not cooperating with the investigation. He told the court that the agency had been unable to trace them since the probe was transferred to the CBI in Sept and argued that granting relief at this stage would adversely affect the investigation. He urged the court to dismiss the criminal petition.The petitioners, however, contended that they were neither named in the original complaint nor in the FIR and were added as accused only during the course of the investigation. “CBI FIR wrongly stated that the petitioners had already been named in the Siddipet case,” the petitioners’ counsel said.They further argued that the transactions under scrutiny were genuine product purchases and not part of a money circulation scheme. Citing relief granted to them by courts in earlier QNet-related cases registered by Hyderabad police, Telangana CID and Karnataka authorities, they maintained that there was no specific act, communication or conduct linking them to the suicide or the offences alleged in the case.
