Two arrested for accepting Rs 14-cr bets on WC matches in Mumbai

mumbai

Updated: Jun 24, 2019 04:04 IST

The Anti-Narcotic Cell (ANC) of Mumbai crime branch busted a betting racket and arrested two bookies on Saturday for allegedly accepting bets on the New Zealand-West Indies World Cup match from a hotel in Grant Road.

During the raid, the officers seized a register, which revealed that the duo had accepted bets of around Rs1 crore every day, amounting to a total of Rs 14 crore. The police said the accused were operating from the hotel room for almost 20 days.

“The accused were placing bets since June 12 and had collected approximately Rs 14 crore since then,” said a police officer from ANC.

The accused – Vishwas Kishan Takalkar, 51, is a city resident, while Ajay Kantraj, 24, is a resident of Bengaluru.

On Saturday evening, Shivdeep Lande, deputy commissioner of police, ANC, and his team raided a hotel room in Khetwadi, after receiving information about the racket from a senior police inspector.

“During the raid, we found the two accused accepting bets on the phone during the live match. We seized eight mobiles phones worth Rs 1.93 lakh, an LCD screen worth Rs 25,000 and Rs 9,470 from the room,” said Lande.

The police are now on the lookout for the kingpin of the racket. “The duo was linked to a man who fixed the betting rates for players and teams through the phone. We are now trying to trace him,” said a police officer.