ANANTAPUR: Special police teams busted an inter state high tech cricket betting racket in the city on Wednesday and arrested as many as 22 members of the gang while seizing huge property from them.
The special police teams under the supervision of Special Branch DSP CM Gangaiah formed by SP SV Rajasekhar Babu following the directions of Anantapur Range DIG J Prabhakar Rao on Wednesday busted the betting racket and seized Rs.3.08 lakhs cash, two communicators used for the purpose of betting, two laptops, 29 cell phones, signal boosters, Wifi rooters, three LED TVs, three cars, 60 sim cards, 30 grams gold ornaments from their possession. This was disclosed by DIG J Prabhakar Rao, SP SV Rajasekhar Babu to the media in Anantapur on Wednesday.
One Proddutur Narasimham along with Ankola Naresh Seth of Maharastra in an organised way were running a company for cricket betting making with their base at Anantapur and extending operations to entire AP, Karnataka, Tamilnadu, Maharastra, and even other countries including Dubai.
The entire betting operations came to light following a complaint lodged at Dharmavaram rural police station limits by a victim who lost Rs 2 lakhs in the cricket betting. SP Rajasekhar Babu who considered the issue seriously brought to the notice of DIG, who in turn directed the police department to act in a stringent manner to curb the betting menace.
The special branch team under DSP Gangaiah formed teams to nab the gang members and on Wednesday morning at Sitarampalli cross on the national highway arrested Arjun and Sunilkumar and seized a Fiat Lenia car from them. Further with information provided by the duo, police raided a flat in Rajahamsa Kingdom apartment in Anantapur city and arrested 8 organisers of the company. Later 12 others were arrested in various parts of the district acting on the information they provided.
Ankola Seth, Proddutur Narasimha and some other key members of the gang had absconded and police are in search of them.
The DIG said that as many as 250 sub bookies across the state were identified and they will be arrested at the earliest, he added. Following the arrest of bookies in the city, 13 bank accounts with an amount of Rs 17.33 lakhs was frozen, he said. For each match around Rs 2 to 2.5 crores of illegal betting transactions had taken place and from January to April this year, transactions to the tune Rs. 8.50 crores had taken place according to the frozen bank accounts, said DIG.
Considering the volume of the transactions and the severity of the case, they are planning to handover the case to Financial Investigation Unit of the CBI, the DIG revealed. The cricket betting is completely running through bank transactions using latest technology and the amount was transferred through hawala deals, he said.
The arrested were identified as Poonamchand Arjun(30), Hindupur, H Sunilkumar(29), Hindupur, B Sivaramaraju(29), Bhimavaram, West Godavari, Penumatsa Ravivarma(35), Dumpagadapa, West Godavari, Chiluvori Pridhviraj(29), Gollalapaduru, West Godavari, Channa Munuswamy(36), Kothapalli, Proddutur, Penumatsa Muralikrishnaraj(26), Bhimavaram, West Godavari, P Sekhar(28), Meenakuntapalli, Hindupur, Mustafa(33), Hindupur, G Kiran(28), Kothagadda, Prakasam district. The arrested agents and organisers are identified as Javed, Dileep, Ekambaram, Shafiulla, Balaji, Chaitanya, Ranganath, Jagadish, Harikumar Reddy, Appaswamy, Naresh, all belonging to Anantapur district.