Chhattisgarh Police arrest over 250 people in online betting
The Chhattisgarh police have arrested more than 250 people over the past month for allegedly operating centres in the state to lure people to indulge in online betting via an online application Mahadev. Officers said a large number of people who placed bets on the online application were from the middle class.
A police officer said, “They opened around 30 centres, mostly in Chhattisgarh, and more than Rs. 200 crores of transactions happen from each of these centres.” Police teams are investigating cases linked to the online application in Raipur, Bhilai and Bilaspur.
The online application was launched by a group of people who operate out of Dubai. According to the police, 258 people have been arrested in 25 cases so far. The application has close to four million downloads and most bets were in the range of Rs. 1,000 to 5,000.
Drug District Superintendent of Police (SP) Abhishek Pallava said that anyone who wanted a centre or branch of Mahadev App needed to deposit about Rs 20 lakh after which they got the authority to become ‘admins’ for unique IDs given to their customers. The branches then hired agents to lure customers and allocated them unique IDs.
The SP said, “Agents got 6% to 8% commission on the bets placed, apart from salary, and the operators up to 20%.” A Chhattisgarh police officer said those who place bets mostly made payments mostly through UPI-based payment systems such as Paytm and Phonepe, which are linked with the several bank accounts of the application operators. A person gets Rs 5,000 for giving photocopies of the documents to open the bank account.
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