Mumbai: After the arrest of six bookies in the city, police have alerted their informers and pulled up their socks in the crackdown on cricket bookies. Police claim their target at this point are not the people who participate in bets, but the ones who arrange for and place the bets.
Santacruz police busted a cricket betting syndicate and arrested seven persons — Bipin Shah alias Bipin Indraprasth (48), Jitendra Jadhav (38), Narayan Rebari (24) and Devilal Jaat (40), Ketan Tanna and Nikunj Thakkar — earlier in January this year. On a tip-off, a team raided an apartment on Linking Road in Santacruz (W) and caught four bookies redhanded placing bets on an ongoing T-20 tournament in Australia.
Police sources said the arrested cricket bookies were a part of a larger betting syndicate and had links across Maharashtra, including Thane, Pune and Nashik. Currently, Thane police and Pune police are engaged in custodial battles of the arrested accused as they are wanted in various cricket betting cases registered in their jurisdiction. Requesting confidentiality, a senior police official told Free Press Journal the arrested accused were small fishes in a big pond.
The official said, “At this point, the police’s main focus is not to apprehend people who place bets on phones, but to get hold of the cricket bookies and break the chain of the persons involved in the betting. The syndicates get into action in every cricket series—World Cup, Indian Premier League or even local cricket leagues in India and abroad.” The bookies follow a pattern of changing their addresses by changing their bases as and when a new cricket series begins to avert any suspicion from housing society. Ultimately, they evade arrest, said police.
