Mumbai crime branch busts lottery racket, four men arrested
The racket has several such centres in Mumbai and surrounding areas, the accused have revealed.
Mumbai: The Mumbai crime branch busted a lottery scam and arrested four persons who were operating the fraud from Mumbai’s northern suburbs.
The accused had created a website for the same that is based in Canada and customers could place bets via an online application.
The accused, who were arrested by unit XI of crime branch, were identified as Alpesh Jamanadas Battiya (34), Zahiruuddin Mainuddin Shaikh (45), Kadar Badshah Allhbaksh Shaikh (42) and Narendra Purshotam Kanani (52). The accused had a shop in Squatters Colony in Goregaon where they had opened a legal lottery centre and were running an illegal ‘Bhagyashree Lottery’s crime branch officials said.
“Our team raided the place and have seized six computers, a printer, bar code scanner, EDC machine and other equipment from the spot. The accused had sourced the software from another person whom they were paying money earned from the business,” said Nisar Tamboli, deputy commissioner of police (Detection I).
The officials thoroughly questioned the distributor and learnt that the shop had been bought for running a cooperative finance office. But they constructed a mezzanine floor and started the illegal lottery.
The distributor had procured the illegal lottery machines. The results would be declared every 10 minutes and the centres would be kept in loop.
The host Google link was used from Canada. He would make monthly online payments for seeking the online service, officials found. They would run both legal and illegal lotteries.
The customers were given login Id and passwords for placing bets on the illegal lotteries. The customers would be charged for the same. The racket has several such centres in Mumbai and surrounding areas, the accused have revealed.