IPL Betting Rackets: The Pune City and Pimpri Chinchwad police teams bust several IPL betting rackets and arrested 53 individuals during the Indian Premier League (IPL) 2023 which was held from March 31 to May 28.
The police adopted various tactics, including undercover operations and decoy strategies, to arrest the culpits involved in the alleged betting rackets. These illicit operations were discovered to be operating from upscale apartments located within plush residential societies.
The Pune Police revealed that around 40 out of the total 53 arrests, were businessmen from Pune and other parts of India, mostly aged between 25 and 50. Additionally, suspects from outside Maharashtra, including Chhattisgarh, Bihar, and Punjab, as well as Mumbai and Nashik, were among those arrested.
It was found that the suspects acted as bookies, and used to receive bets from clients and subsequently place them on online betting platforms primarily hosted outside India. Deputy Commissioner of Police (Crime), Pune City Police, Amol Zende, highlighted the commonality of using these applications among the suspects.
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“One of the key commonalities is the use of phone-based applications by the suspects. In all our raids, we seized cellphones and laptops which were being used by the suspects to run betting applications”, Amol Zende was quoted as saying to Indian Express.
During the course of the raids, the Pimpri Chinchwad Police uncovered at least seven online betting platforms hosted outside India, with indications suggesting that the main operators were based in Europe and the Middle East.
Furthermore, investigations in two cases revealed that the bookies employed a phone-based application that provided a telecast of the match a few minutes ahead of the television broadcast, giving them an unfair advantage.
“The bookies are very cautious in their operations. They never use their registered phone number and keep changing their contact details. They also keep changing their location. We have come across cases of bookies offering a line of credit for people to place bets, literally funding their gambling addiction. These loans are later recovered with very high interest rates — often using pressure tactics and muscle power”, an officer revealed.
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