The Samta Nagar police allegedly busted an online-gambling racket with the arrest of 33 persons, who were involved in gambling via online games. The arrests were made following raids in six cyber cafés in the north region and another cyber café in Tardeo.
A few persons lost lakhs of rupees in these games and had filed complaints with the police.
Additional commissioner, north region, S.R. Paraskar said, “The raids took place on Tuesday afternoon across the north region after conducting decoy operations. We raided two Internet cafés at Goregaon (east), two at Kandivali (west) and one each at Malad (east) and Kandivali (east).”
Explaining the modus operandi, Mr Paraskar said, “For every win, the players got a point. At the end of the game, every point would be converted into money. For example, a 1,000 coins earned in a video game called Roulette, Bingo etc, would be worth `1,000. The players were given their personal user ID, account and a password. Also, once they got acquainted with the cyber café owners, they were even allowed to play from home.”
L.G. Shinde, police inspector said, “We have arrested the owners including a woman, cashiers and the players. All the cyber cafés have a tie-up with an online gambling portal named Game King India Private Ltd. with whom they share a profit margin. We have arrested an employee of this company identified as Shiv Chaurasia. Chaurasia used to collect the company’s profit share from all the cafés.”
Sub-inspector Ganesh Patil said, “We have seized the computers, hard disk and `1.31 lakh in the raid. We have booked them under Section 420 (cheating) of the IPC and under relevant sections of the IT Act and Gambling Act. They have been remanded to our custody till August 8.”
According to the police, many cyber cafes in the city are running this racket.