Kolkata:
Bookies
in the city have started taking orders directly from
Dubai
, with the rates being fixed by D-Company gangsters stationed there, investigations into the Park Street betting racket have revealed.
Forty-eight hours after the arrest of six punters in two different raids at posh addresses in Kolkata during the India-Australia World Cup T20 clash, cops say that their questioning has established one important thing: Kolkata is now an emerging hub of betting. More importantly, the city's punters no longer need to be "controlled" from their "superiors" based in cities like Jaipur and Mumbai. The "international" rates now reach Kolkata directly and collections directly distributed from abroad, mostly directly from Dubai, through local channels.
Sources say the bookies' biggest asset is no longer the "dabba" phone alone (used to receive rates), but even the laptop that has the latest software loaded on it. The free social service
networks
- whose conversations are difficult to trace - too have come as a boon. The software, which has seen maximum use in Delhi and Mumbai since the 2011 World Cup that India won, saw its precise use in the last one-day World Cup that took place last year. This year though, it seems that during the T20 World Cup, its use has become the norm. What has also changed is the modus operandi - all bets are accepted online, and top apartment buildings and rooms of star
hotels
are being used as "war rooms." The continuous shifting of war rooms have ensured that the police can hardly reach them.
Cops are expecting a huge amount of business on Thursday, when India takes on West Indies in a semifinal. "If India makes it to the final, expect betting on everything - the nature of the pitch, whether there will be a floodlight disruption, and who gets to score the fastest 25 among the two teams," a police source said.
According to an officer, the bookies have opted for online trading using mobile wallets, and that was successfully done through free messaging services like WhatsApp, WeeChat, Viber and ChatON. The messages can neither be decoded nor can they be tracked without prior intimation to the service providers.
So what is this Back-N-Lay Pro software, whose dominance in the NCR region of Delhi led the bookies to decide on the rates? The rates of the odds between two cricket teams originate in various places, and bets are taken on this basis during the match. After a match gets over, profit and losses are calculated by this software. The rates keep fluctuating with
the fall
of wickets and runs scored.