Betting on the rise in Surat

SURAT: Vipul Desai has an agricultural background and rakes in a lot of money, several lakhs in fact. But he is not into farming, he is a bookie based in Surat, one the many who are involved in this ‘lucrative’ business in the Diamond City.
Business opportunity for him are cricket or tennis matches across the globe. And he can conduct operations from virtually anywhere, although he prefers to be most of the time at his hide-outs — what with the array of gadgets, a Pentium IV laptop computer, mobile phones, desk top computers and CTVs, that he employs to further business.
As luck would have it, Desai wrongly opted for a flat in Soham Apartments on Ghod Dod Road on Sunday rather than his obscure hide-outs in other parts of the city, to keep his betting business running.A police team,which followed him while coming out of his house in Varachha, trapped him along with another bookie Shailesh Shah (45) and seven assistants.
No wonder, Desai sees to it that he gets ‘protection’ while doing business and is committed to greasing palms of all those who could become hindrance. This he does through middlemen who act as bridge with the police here, he says.
Desai says cricket’s expert commentators’ remarks during matches become serious enough to influence the betting rates. At the time of the crackdown by the police on Sunday, he has 60 betters on his list and was on his way to making a neat sum.
But even in the police lockup, he was worried of payments to be made to the bettors and appeared upset about not having printouts from the laptop. He told TNN that he would make payments to each of the bettors, even if it meant doling out more in absence of any proof now.
Desai’s close associate, bookie Shailesh Shah, who is in this business for the last five years, told TNN that a close networking among the big operators in Mumbai, Delhi, Kolkata and Ahmedabad has made betting a lucrative business.
And the Diamond City has 15 big bookies each with over 200 committed bettors. Talking about the ethics of business, both Desai and Shah say all deals are made on mutual faith and there are no defaults in making payments. Both of them admitted to involvement of the underworld in Mumbai and Dubai.
Interestingly, contrary to the general belief that any India-Pak cricket match is a dream event even for bookies, in terms of heightened interest among the viewers and bettors many among them feel the bettings rates are ‘fixed. They would rather put stake on matches with high probability of last-minute results, than high-profile ones like the India-Pakistan matches, says Desai.
No wonder then that Wimbledon is becoming a favourite with bookies, with top-seeded players getting crashing out in the first round of the tournament. In the city of diamonds and textile, bookie-business appears to be rampant and often their modus operandi is so secretive that nabbing them becomes difficult, says deputy commissioner of police (south) Khursheed Ahmed.