Betting racket running out of Noida highrise busted, 5 arrested

Noida: In a joint operation, the Crime Response Team (CRT) and officials from Sector 113 police station on Thursday arrested five persons for running a betting racket and cheating people of crores of rupees during the India-England match of the ongoing T20 World Cup. According to additonal DCP Manisha Singh, police received information that a gang of bookies were operating several phone lines in Noida to take bets on the result of the match. The gang was traced to a flat in Sector 79 and teams were deployed to arrest them. When the officers reached the spot, the 12th over of the second innings was underway and the accused were accepting bets with odds of 50 paise on India's win and Rs 2 on England's win.
Police arrested Vinay Sehgal (35), Dev Kumar (24), Navdeep Singh (30), Rajiv Sharma (48), and Salil Seth (25). Police said the accused operated a gang of small-time bookies and got their profits through hawala. The bookies' connections extended from the NCR to Dubai through hawala. Efforts are on to trace other associates of the accused.Police station in-charge Vipin Kumar said that three laptops, three tablets, three desktop monitors, 32 mobiles, two IC recorders, six notepads, three line boxes, one CPU, one printer, three extension boards, six mobile stands, 13 chargers, eight data cables, two mobile handsets, one router, and one dongle were recovered from their possession.An FIR was registered under BNS sections 61(2) (criminal conspiracy) and 318(4) (cheating), Section 66 of the IT Act, and Sections 3 and 4 of the Public Gambling Act, 1867.Get the latest lifestyle updates on Times of India, along with Women's day wishes, messages and quotes !