IPL betting racket busted in Vizag's Duvvada; eight held

Visakhapatnam: The Vizag city police busted a cricket betting racket in the city and arrested eight persons involved in online betting on the ongoing IPL matches. The betting racket was busted in a raid at a rented duplex house at Tirumala Nagar under Duvvada police station limits in the city. It is the fourth incident of cricket betting being busted in the past one month in Vizag city.

Circle Inspector of Duvvada, T Lakshmi said that the arrested people belonged to Raipur and Bhilai of Chhattisgarh but were currently staying in Vizag city.

On a tip off, the police conducted the raid and recovered 20 mobile phones, two laptops and some electronic devices and little cash from the gang, the inspector said. Posing as employees at a few private firms, the gang led by Pradeep from Bhilai hired a house for Rs. 30,000 per month for betting operations. The gang procured a multi-level communicator equipment box from Delhi for communicating with punters at a time and accessed the latest information on bets and rates through the internet from various websites. Once the latest information was confirmed by bookies, bets were offered to punters.

The investigation has revealed that the gang used to accept bets through Phone-Pay and other online payment modes and they also paid the money to winning punters through online payment mode, Circle Inspector Lakshmi added. The gang used to organize betting operations during the IPL season and were involved in online-trading.

A senior police officer with the City Task Force said that the organizers of the cricket betting have stopped accepting the liquid cash. The organizers also usually change their location every year and take rooms on rent to carry on betting operations.