Mumbai: Man booked for claiming prize money on bogus lottery tickets

A 47-year-old lottery seller has lodged a complaint with the police claiming that a man had recently approached him with 25 winning lottery tickets of Rs 9000 each and claimed the prize money. The victim claimed that later he learnt that the submitted lotteries were fake. Interestingly, the victim while reading a local newspaper realised that the accused and his other gang members were arrested by the Borivali police while trying to dupe another lottery seller by giving him fake winning lottery tickets.

According to the Sion police, the complainant in the case is Sion resident RL Jaiswal. As per the victim, on March 02, a man who identified himself as Arun had visited his shop and claimed that he had 25 winning lottery tickets with prize of Rs 9000 each. "The result of the said lottery was declared on February 28. The victim checked that the lotteries submitted by Arun indeed had winning numbers after which Arun was given Rs 2.25 lakh winning prize.

Later the victim was informed by the lottery officials that the winning tickets submitted by Arun were fake. He tried contacting Arun on his phone, but the latter's phone remained switched off. The victim then approached the police and got a criminal offence lodged in the matter on Thursday. A case under sections 420 (cheating and dishonestly inducing delivery of property), 465 (forgery), 467 (forgery of valuable security), 468 (forgery for purpose of cheating) and 471 (using as genuine a forged document or electronic record) of the Indian Penal Code.

"The victim had recently learnt that a four-member gang was arrested by the Borivali police on March 04 for trying to dupe another lottery seller by submitting fake lotteries. An article published in a local newspaper had carried photographs of the arrested gang member and the victim identified one of the accused persons as Arun Devri, who had duped him as well," said a police officer.