Ghaziabad: Following raids in two different areas of the district, Ghaziabad police on Wednesday arrested 15 persons accused of running a betting syndicate during the ongoing IPL cricket matches. Police said that the arrests were made from Raj Nagar and Sahibabad areas of the district.
A mathematics professor with a leading private university is among the 15 arrested persons, said police.
In the first incident, the police acted on a tip-off and arrested two men from Rakesh Marg area. They were placing bets on the ongoing IPL matches between Delhi Daredevils and Rajasthan Royals on Wednesday night.
"The arrested persons told police that other gang members are operating the racket from a shop in RDC area, following which raids were conducted and five more accused were caught red-handed," said Akash Tomar, Superintendent of police (City).
The accused men have been identified as Bittu, Prateek, Sachin, Manoj, Guru, Sameer and Deepak. All accused belong to Ghaziabad.
Police have recovered 10 mobiles, a voice recording box, two computers, a WiFi modem, an LCD TV, Rs 28,050 in cash and registers related to transactions made by the accused.
However, the police have failed to trace the people up in the line. They said they have come across several persons and more arrests would be made soon.
In another raid conducted on Wednesday, police arrested eight persons for betting on IPL matches from Sahibabad area. An LED TV, 7 mobile phones and Rs 26,900 in cash has been recovered from them.
The accused have been identified as Firoz, Irshad, Vakil, Salim, Waseem, Shah Rukh, Shubham Tyagi and Farman.
After cops got a tip-off, the accusedwere rounded up from the house of one Mohammad Furkan in Garima Garden. The accused revealed that they had rented the flat and used to invite people to place bets on IPL games. In return, they would give 20 per cent of the profit earned through IPL betting to the house owner, who allowed them to use the house.
Police said that both the syndicates followed the same pattern of betting, in which they used to invite 'punters' to place bets. The bets are generally placed on instances, like a team surpassing a particular score in 10 overs or not, winning or losing of toss and the runs to be made in an over or next three balls, etc.