Casino busted in posh Gurgaon colony; 43 arrested
The Gurgaon police on Saturday night busted a Casino that had been operating illegally in block L of DLF City Phase 2 for the past one month. They seized Rs 20.4 lakh gambling money from the spot and arrested 43 people, including five Nepali women.
The Gurgaon police busted a Casino in the city late Saturday night that had been operating illegally from a house in L-block of DLF City phase 2 for the past one month.
The police have arrested 43 people, including five nepalese women, and seized Rs 20.4 lakh from the gambling den. A case under gambling act and excise act was registered at DLF City Phase-2 police station on Sunday morning against 43 people.
A police team raided the premises and unearthed a full-fledged dice joint being run on the ground floor of the 6,80-square yard house.
The house is owned by Rajender Yadav who had rented it out to Naresh Malhotra who dabbles in shares and stock market. Malhotra had been running the casino across three floors with 29 rooms and basement.
The hallways resembled high stakes casinos of Nepal and Goa and poker tables were placed in basement where high rollers placed bets using chips of various denominations ranging between 1000 and 25000.
ACP(DLF) Ramesh Pal said, “We had a tip off that a casino was operating out of a rented house from the past one month. The casino was designed by a professional from Nepal.”
Malhotra had two partners and they were using the building as guest house too for their patrons. They had hired five women from Kathmandu, Nepal, who had five years experience each in working in casinos.
The entry charges were Rs 1 lakh and more than 100 people visited it daily, said police.
The adjacent vacant plot was used for parking and the entries used to start after 10pm. The den used to remain open till 5am.
“The businessman placed bets in Indian currency. Six people were hedging bets and two men were acting as token dealers. We have confiscated tokens worth one crore from the spot. A total of ten people from Nepal had been hired to work in the casino. The businessmen provided them food and lodging, apart from salary,” said Pal.
Vinod Bansal, one of the neighbours said, “Earlier the building was run as guest house but recently it was renovated and the footfall increased. The vacant plot used to get occupied till night and lot of women also visited the building. We had no objection as no one was bothering us and we never heard loud music or had no such nuisance”.
DCP(East) Deepak Saharan said, “The police team has done a good job and caught people red-handed from the spot. We had busted a gambling den earlier too. But this is the first time that we unearthed such a racket running out of an upscale locality”.
All the accused were later released on bail by the duty magistrate on Sunday.
An illegal bar was also being run in the basement from cops seized 100 bottles of IMFL.