New Delhi: With the arrest of eight alleged bookies, Delhi Police today claimed to have smashed three betting syndicates which were operating during the World Cup cricket match between India and Bangladesh collecting a total of Rs 2.78 crore as bets from punters.
Acting on specific information, police raided a hotel in Karol Bagh area in central Delhi, a flat in Rohini and a house at Pitam Pura in north Delhi and arrested eight people. They recovered four laptops, 30 mobile phones, four TVs, two calculators, three data cards and notebooks from them.
Gaurav Sharma (32), Shanku Arora (29), Goldy Verma (28) and Pankaj Saluja (33) were arrested from the hotel in Karol Bagh, while Devener Rana (32) and Tarun Bhatia (24) were held from Rohini and Anil Kumar Gupta (43) and Navin Kumar Gupta (41) were arrested from Pitam Pura, police said.
Rana, Arora, Verma and Saluja are property dealers, while Navin is a pharmacist. Most of the eight arrested men have been in the business for several years and Anil was arrested in 2005 for a similar offence, police said.
"The modus operandi of the betting is that the rate of the odds between the two cricket playing teams originates from outside India. On the basis of that, the bets are taken during the match," Ashok Chand, Deputy Commissioner of Police (Crime and Railways), said.
After the match is over, profit and loses are calculated by a specifically generated software known as "Back 'N' Lay PRO" and the rates keep fluctuating with the fall of wickets and the runs scored, he said.
Chand said the bookies were watching the cricket match on TV on Saturday and were using the laptop to enter the data. They use mobile phones to get the rates of the odds on the match and for taking bets from the punters.
"The recording facility on the mobile phone is used for keeping records of the bets placed by the punters. One set of mobile phones are specifically used for receiving the rates of betting which fluctuates ball by ball," Chand said.
Apart from receiving rates on telephone, they also received the rates on internet for which they used the data cards. The data for betting was also maintained manually on the notebooks as a backup, he said.
While the betting syndicate in Karol Bagh had received bets from punters to the tune of Rs 1.15 crore, the syndicate in Rohini had received Rs 53 lakh and the one in Pitam Pura had taken Rs 1.10 crore, Chand said.