IPL cricket betting racket busted in Pahadishareef; Rs. 4.90L cash seized

Hyderabad: The special operations team (SOT), LB Nagar zone, busted an online cricket betting racket at Sriram Nagar colony under the limits of Pahadishareef police station and arrested three persons. They also seized Rs. 4.90 lakh cash from the accused.

The arrested persons have been identified as Muddam Sathish Reddy (30), Sourla Srikanth (22), and Kallem Laxma Reddy (32). The main organiser Yakala Naveen Kumar is absconding. The police seized cash, a laptop, and four mobile phones – all worth Rs. 5.50 lakh – from them.

Muddam Sathish Reddy was organising the illegal cricket betting racket under the main bookie Yakala Naveen Kumar. Sathish was collecting bets from punters during the ongoing Indian Premier League 2022 matches. He used Cricket Live Line (an online betting app) to follow ball-to-ball and over-to-over match betting rates, paying the commission to the winning punters clandestinely.

Sathish accepted bets through Sourla Srikanth who received cricket betting rates from Yakala Naveen Kumar. After the matches ended, Srikanth distributed the winning and losing amounts to the customers/punters through mobile banking, Paytm, GPay, or net banking.

How the betting is organised

The gang revealed that the bookies arranged telephonic lines and they gave line numbers to the punters. The betting starts after the first ball of the first over and goes on till the last ball. The punters call the bookies while the match is taking place and place their bets. While placing the bets, bookies note down the details of the bet and the punter. The conversation is also automatically recorded.

After the match, bookies inform their collection agents about the details of the collection and the distribution of amounts. Based on this information, the collection agents collect the money from those who lose and distribute the money to the winners. The remaining amount (profit) is given to the bookies.

On 12 May, the gang had gathered at a house in Sriram Nagar Colony where they were counting the money collected from the earlier day's match (58th IPL match between Rajasthan Royals and Delhi Capitals). On a tip-off, the sleuths of the special operations team, LB Nagar zone, along with the Pahadishareef police raided the house and arrested three persons.