India: 17 arrested in operation against illegal online gambling in Siliguri
Police say two of those arrested were supervisors.
India.- The Siliguri Metropolitan Police carried out an operation against an illegal online gambling operation in Bhaktinagar on Sunday night (October 22). According to the police report, 17 people were arrested: 15 were allegedly operating online bets through an application, while two engineering students, were supervising.
A.K. Chaturvedi, the Siliguri Metropolitan police commissioner, said the raid was carried out after a complaint of kidnapping. Police say they found the person who had been abducted at the same apartment on Don Bosco Road where the gambling operation was taking place.
According to Telegraph India, the illegal gambling hub hired young men to run online gambling apps for a monthly salary of Rs 25,000. In addition, they gave those employed free food and accommodation. Police expect to make more arrests.
Elsewhere in India, police have reported that 258 people have been arrested in Chhattisgarh over the past month for alleged involvement with the operation of an online betting app called Mahadev. Officers say the app was launched from Dubai and that centres were opened in India. The app was reported to have close to four million downloads.
Police told the Hindustan Times there were around 30 centres, mainly in Chhattisgarh. Each processed more than ₹200 crores of transactions, with most stakes in the range of ₹1,000 to 5,000. Anyone who wanted to run a centre for the app would have to deposit about ₹20 lakh, after which they would have the right to become administrators of unique IDs for their own customers.
In Delhi, officers arrested 29 people, including seven women, for allegedly gambling at Hotel City West End. Police seized Rs 5.85 lakh and 10 decks of playing cards in an operation on Saturday.
