Betting racket: ED files chargesheet

Such decoders give the punters an advantage of 5 to 10 seconds that they use for betting. This would enable them to know the result before the people who were betting through live telecast on their TV sets. The investigation has revealed that the accused paid Rs 65,000 annually for three such decoders installed by a Delhi-based person identified as “Sanjay”. Sources said that this aspect needs more investigation to ascertain how the bookies were using live streaming without breaks.

However, they said through this modus operandi the racketeers were cheating their clients who are based in India, Pakistan, Dubai, UK among other countries and betting through them. The chargesheet claims that the case has international ramifications and investigation is still in infancy.

The chargesheet has been filed against seven persons — Girish Patel alias Tommy Patel, 34, Kiran Mala, 48, Chirag Parikh, 42, Dharmendrasinh Chauhan alias Dharmin Chauhan, 38 — all residents of Ahmedabad, Ritesh Bansal alias Bharat Delhi and his brother Ankush Bansal, both from New Delhi and Mukesh Kumar alias Mukesh Delhi alias Mukesh Sharma. The chargesheet claims that all the accused are the key operators of the betting racket.

In the chargesheet, ED has claimed the partners of “Maruti Ahmedabad”, run by the accused based in Ahmedabad, “received and placed various bets from a large number of bookies amounting to over Rs 2,469 crore on different matches played between December 4, 2014 till March 19, 2015 (world cup).” The chargesheet describes Tommy Patel, a key accused, as a college dropout, who is involved in betting since 2000. Patel has told the ED officials that he used to keep the betting accounts while Mala and his other employees, Jaheer Abbas Kureshi and Nikhil, among others used to “work as writers, commentators and helper to arrange conference calls”.