High-stakes betting racket on IPL final busted, 13 held from Varanasi flat

Varanasi: Hours after the IPL final concluded in Ahmedabad on Sunday night, the Special Operations Group (SOG) of Varanasi Police busted an alleged betting syndicate operating from a flat in the Taktakpur area under Cantt police station limits, arresting 13 persons, including tech-savvy punters from Mumbai, Jaipur and other cities, during a raid at a flat in Taktakpur area under Cantt police station area early Monday.

Police said data and documents seized during the operation suggested that bets worth over Rs 20 crore placed by clients connected through various social media platforms were being managed by the racket.

ACP (Crime) Alok Priyadarshi said that acting on specific intelligence inputs, the SOG team raided the flat at around 5 am and arrested 13 accused. Those held included Ritesh Diwakar Shukla and Rahul Maurya of Maharashtra, Ravi Yadav of Varanasi, Arpit Tiwari, Aman Singh, Vikas Patel, Ziyaulhaq, Amit Tiwari, Sachin Singh alias Shaile, Gaurav Chauhan, Devesh Chauhan of Jaipur in Rajasthan, Aniket Kumar of Fatehpur and Saurabh Chauhan of Etawah.

Ritesh was identified as the alleged kingpin of the racket. Priyadarshi said that although Shukla hails from Varanasi, he operated the network from Mumbai. Ravi was his close associate and managed the gang’s operations in Varanasi.

Priyadarshi said the other members, selected from different parts of Maharashtra, Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh, were highly educated and technically skilled. All of them were operating from a single location in Varanasi.

During the raid, police recovered 17 smartphones, 10 laptops, a cryptocurrency digital wallet, ledgers and Rs 1,350 in cash.

During initial interrogation, the accused allegedly revealed several details about the operation of the racket, ACP (Crime) Alok Priyadarshi said. Preliminary investigations suggest that the gang had expanded its network over the past eight to ten months.

According to the probe, the syndicate was guided by a person identified as “Malik”, who trained members in methods of earning money through betting. The gang allegedly paid for advertisements on Meta platforms, using cricket-related promotional content to attract users. Those who clicked on the links were redirected to Malik through Telegram, where he allegedly lured them into betting by claiming that his predictions had remained accurate for the past 10 years.

Investigators suspect that nearly two lakh people were linked to the racket over the past eight to ten months. Priyadarshi said that betting transactions routed through the network in the last one month alone were estimated at around Rs 20 crore.

According to the probe, the gang earned a commission of about six per cent on these transactions. Officials said the earnings, estimated at around Rs 1.80 crore, were distributed among the racket’s members. The investigation has also revealed that Shukla allegedly purchased land in Lucknow through hawala transactions.

Police have further detected deposits of around Rs 1 crore in digital accounts and traced cryptocurrency holdings worth nearly Rs 20 lakh in a digital wallet linked to the accused.

The ACP said that apart from tracing the roots of the Shukla’s betting racket in other states, police will also work to solve the mystery of Malik.