India: 258 arrested in connection with illegal betting app Mahadev 

Police carried out a series of raids linked to the Mahadev app.

India.- Some 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.

Brokers received between 6 per cent to 8 per cent commission from wagers, excluding salaries. The operators up to 20 per cent.

Officers said that many people betting on online applications were from the middle class. One businessman who placed bets through the app said it was an “addiction”.

Abhinav K Shukla, a law professor in Hidayatullah National Law University, Raipur, suggests that Chhattisgarh should enact legislation to specifically prohibit online gambling “as done by states such as Telangana, Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu.” He said this should be done via the Information Technology Act in order to prevent gambling.

“Through this, the state can build a strong legal mechanism to restrict the acts of online gambling,” he said.

India considers regulating online gambling

According to local media reports, the government is considering an Online Gambling Regulation Act, that would create a central gambling regulator, the Online Gambling Commission, with a mandate to oversee the operations of online gambling operators and punish illegal operators. It would have the power to issue, suspend and revoke licences for online gambling.

To date, apart from the Supreme Court’s precedent on skill-based gambling, there is no federal statute to govern India’s gambling industry, with each state taking its own stance on the issue.