7 lottery centres raided, 11 held for 'GST evasion'

Seven online lottery centres in central Mumbai were raided and 11 persons were arrested for alleged evasion of the Goods and Services Tax (GST) by issuing hand-written lottery tickets instead of the printed ones, an official said.

Teams of the city police's crime branch carried out the raids in Shivaji Park, Byculla, Kalachowki and Agripada areas, the official added.

This is the first such action against the lottery centre owners, who were duping state GST for a long time by issuing hand written tickets.

"During the raids, police have recovered 11 computers, hard disks, CPUs, five mobile phones and cash worth over Rs 1 lakh," he said.

"The owners of the online lottery centres used to give hand-written tickets, of the various online lotteries, including Goa's authorised lottery 'Lucky Four', instead of the printed tickets," he said.

Through this, the lottery centre owners had been earning profits and duping the state government by not paying the GST, which lottery centres have to pay for every tickets, he said.

An offence was registered under IPC sections 294 A for running an unauthorised lottery centre. The accused were also booked under IPC sections 420 (cheating and dishonestly inducing delivery of property), 465 (forgery), 468 (Forgery for purpose of cheating), 471 (using as genuine a forged document).

They were also booked under sections 4(A), 7(3) of the Lotteries (Regulation) Act, the official said.