Gang of 4 held for cricket betting in Noida’s Sector 100

Gautam Budh Nagar police arrest a gang of four men engaged in online betting on live cricket matches in Noida. Police recover cash, electronic devices, and fake identification cards. Investigation ongoing.

The Gautam Budh Nagar police busted a gang of four men on Saturday for allegedly engaging in online betting on live cricket matches from an apartment in Noida’s Sector 100, police said.

The four suspects in custody. (Sunil Ghosh/HT Photo)

According to police, the arrest was made after they received a tip-off about the gang’s whereabouts. They were informed about a group called Tesla, which was operated by a man identified as Gaurav Gupta, alias Tesla 2, a resident of Shahdara in Delhi.

Police were told that Gupta had been running the gambling for the past six years in Delhi and around a month ago, he shifted to Noida along with his three other accomplices identified as Nitin, a resident of Vijay Nagar in Ghaziabad, Ajeet Singh, Dinesh Garg, residents of Kota, Rajasthan.

Gupta also had a history of betting in Dubai for around 45 days, police said.

Harish Chander, deputy commissioner of police, Noida, said, “For the past few days, police were receiving information about some suspicious activity going on at an apartment in Lotus Boulevard in Sector 100, under the Sector 39 police station limits. When a police team raided the spot, all four suspects, aged between 30 to 35, were caught red-handed.”

“During the investigation, it came to light that the suspects had downloaded various cricket applications for real-time betting. They were using a compact briefcase, which connects several calls at a time, to inform people who bet through them,” DCP Chander said, adding that the suspects used to connect people via video calls, and if someone was winning the bet, they used to disconnect the call at the very moment.

DCP added, “The suspects were paying ₹50,000 as rent for the flat and had purchased fake SIM cards using fake Aadhaar cards to escape arrest.”

According to police, they have recovered foreign currencies worth ₹4 lakh, ₹3.7 lakh of cash, 14 ATM cards, six credit cards, 20 Aadhaar cards, three laptops, one LED television, one printer, seven mobile phones, two network routers, five earphones, four calculators, one hookah, two cars, one PAN card, and two passports. A bank account with ₹11 lakh in it was also seized, they added.

An FIR under the relevant section of the Indian Penal Code was registered at Sector 39 police station on Saturday, police said, adding that further investigation is underway.