E-Paper
11 of betting racket held; had placed bets worth ₹5 crore placed on Ind vs Aus cricket match
New Delhi: With the arrest of 11 men and the recovery of 74 mobile phones from a rented house in east Delhi’s Karkardooma, a cricket betting racket, with its network
New Delhi: With the arrest of 11 men and the recovery of 74 mobile phones from a rented house in east Delhi’s Karkardooma, a cricket betting racket, with its network spread across North India, has been busted, the Delhi Police’s crime branch said Monday.
The value of the bets placed when the police team raided the house — when India was playing Australia in Bengaluru on Sunday — was about ₹5 crore, Ajit Kumar Singla, additional commissioner of police (crime branch), said.
“Bets were being placed on various parameters— who will win the toss, the runs scored, sessions, no. of wickets and which team would win,” Singla said.
Police said on Sunday afternoon, they received a tip-off about a betting racket being operated out of a house in Ashoka Niketan in Karkardooma. “At that time, India vs Australia match was on. We raided the house and caught 11 suspects from there,” Singla said. The police said the 11 men are those who ran the racket and the police are yet to identify and apprehend the bet placers.
The arrested men included brothers, Amit Arora and Anuj Arora. The older brother, 48-year-old Amit, was the mastermind of the racket and he had been running it for the past 10 years, Singla said, adding that he had made a fortune over the years. “He has purchased valuable properties using the gains he made through bets,” the officer said.
The others helped Amit with the work and they, too, sometimes placed bets, the officer said.
From the house, the police recovered 74 mobile phones, four briefcases, seven laptops and two television sets. “The arrested persons disclosed that bets worth ₹5 crore had already been placed with them from across India on the day of the India-Australia match,”the officer said.
Explaining the arrangement, Singla said each of these briefcases contained 18 mobile phones on which bets wer received. “These also had the facility to relay the rates of bets before each ball were bowled. The network of bookies is spread across the country and they would look for prospective betters,” the officer explained.
He said the racket involved 72 bookies located in states such as Delhi, Maharashtra, Punjab, Uttar Pradesh and Rajasthan.
Singla said most betters are suspected to be financially well off and efforts are on to identify them.
