The Pune police said they busted a betting racket operated from an apartment in Kondhwa, where bookies were accepting online bets on the Indian Premier League matches. They have arrested nine people who were allegedly using phone-based applications to facilitate bets placed by people.
Sleuths from the crime branchтАЩs Unit 3 received a tip-off around 8.45 pm on Saturday that some people were accepting bets on the IPL match between Chennai Super Kings and Mumbai Indians. Police said they raided an apartment in a plush residential society in Kondhwa and unearthed an organised IPL betting den.
Nine people were arrested and 18 cell phones, three laptops, one display screen and a central processing unit and close to Rs 1 lakh in cash were seized from them. тАЬThe probe has revealed that these bookies were using a particular phone-based betting application. These suspects had created several user IDs of people who were placing bets online,тАЭ said a crime branch officer.
The arrested suspects have been identified as Yash Pratap Singh (22), Dharmendra Sangam Lal (25), Regal Patel (22), Anurag Yadav (25), Santosh Yadav (19), all hailing from the Varanasi and Prayagraj districts of Uttar Pradesh; Indrajeet Mujumdar (30) from West Bengal; and three bookies from PuneтАФAjinkya Kolekar (30), Hemant Gandhi (38) and Sachin Ghodke (45).
The suspects were booked under provisions of the Maharashtra Prevention of Gambling Act. тАЬWe are also investigating why the bookies from Uttar Pradesh and West Bengal were in Pune and whether these suspects have more associates linked to them,тАЭ said the police officer.
