Six nabbed in Shahdara for running betting racket on IPL games

After a poor show of batting in the first innings of an Indian Premier League (IPL) game against Kolkata Knight Riders on May 9, the Kings XI Punjab team began discussing a strategy to defend their miniscule total of 167.

Far removed from the Punjab Cricket Association Stadium in Mohali, six gambling racket operators had huddled inside a nondescript room in Shahdara and discussed their own strategy.

They had thought that the Knight Riders would win the match and had designated the team as their winner.

The gambling operators then started paying close attention to the match being played out in two LED screens, while they took bets from hundreds of people on 22 mobile phones.

While the bets were meticulously documented onto an Excel sheet, six policemen from Farsh Bazar police station came knocking on their doors.

The gambling operators immediately began getting rid of their documents and disposed off several SIM cards, before eventually being arrested.

By the time the police started to document the betting records and started collecting crucial evidence, the six men looked at life behind bars, while the Kings XI Punjab managed to beat all odds and clinch the match with a 14 run win.

The gambling racket was run by Manmohan Krishan, who used to be a driver by profession till 2006, before he decided to start the gambling racket in Shahdara.

His five other associates were identified as Sushil Pal, Manish Kumar, Naveen Kumar, Mukesh Kumar and Keshav.

By the time the raiding team from Delhi Police had busted the IPL betting racket, around Rs 1 crore in gambling money had exchanged hands.

Moreover, two laptops and LED screens, one extension board, 22 mobile phones, six master phones used to interact with high level bookies were recovered from the flat.

According to Deputy Commissioner of Police (Shahdara) Nupur Prasad, the incident came to light on May 9 that an online gambling racket was operating inside a flat in Vishwas Nagar.

The SHO of Farsh Bazar police station had supervised the entire operation and also constituted the raiding team.

The accused had reportedly disposed off some mobile SIM cards. However, the police had enough evidence to tie the six men to the IPL betting racket.

"We have recovered a coding sheet used by the accused to document the bets. They were an intricate set of codes devised by them and it took us some time to decipher the codes," said Prasad.

The gambling operators had been taking bets on the outcome of the entire match and also the outcome of every single over. The coding sheet, accessed by Millennium Post, shows a set of serial numbers and alphabets used to describe a bet, along with the name of the person placing the bets.

On bets pertaining to outcome of matches, a majority of bets placed were in lakhs, whereas the bets involving outcomes per over were placed in thousands, with some bets touching Rs 65,000.

The letters 'L' denoted the favourites of the match; in this case the gamblers had designated KKR as the favourite. Meanwhile, Kings XI was denoted by code 'K'. If a person had won a bet and the gamblers had to pay him, he was denoted as 'Y', while the people who lost the bet where denoted as 'N'.

After the match, the profit would be taken by the accused. A margin of the profit would be given to big time bookies, who they contacted over the master phones.