ED conducts search operation at premises of bookies

The Ahmedabad unit of Enforcement Directorate (ED) today conducted search operations at various premises in different cities of suspected bookies as well as their associates to find out their involvement in a cricket betting racket unearthed earlier in March by the agency.
According to sources in the ED, the search operation was carried out in Mumbai, Delhi, Nagpur and Bhopal. It was also revealed that several documents were found during the search.
In Mumbai, ED officials searched houses of alleged bookies Paresh Bhatia and Muneer.
In Delhi, ED searched premises of Arun Gupta, Aman Kapur, and one Ashish Grover, who according to the agency, is the partner of famous bookie 'Shyam Delhi'.

According to ED sources, Shyam Delhi along with Bharat Delhi aka Ritesh Bansal were also involved in IPL spot fixing case. Bansal had been arrested by ED from Delhi in May and brought here.
In Nagpur, ED conducted search at the premises of local bookie Sanjay Agarwal, known as 'Chhotu Nagpur' in betting circuit, while another house of Muneer was searched in Bhopal.

According to ED sources, Gupta and Kapur are allegedly connected to 'betfair.Com' operations in India, while all the others are "local bookies".
On March 19, ED had busted a betting racket and arrested two bookies -- Kiran Mala and Tommy Patel -- from a farm house on the out-skirts of Vadodara city. ED has revealed that Mala and Patel were in touch with all the big bookies in the country as well as of Pakistan and Dubai.

Later in May, ED arrested Ritesh Bansal aka 'Bharat Delhi', his brother Ankush Bansal, and one Mukesh Sharma from Delhi and brought them here on transit remand.
In June, ED filed a chargesheet in the Rs 2,500 crore cricket betting racket in a special court for Prevention of Money Laundering Act(PMLA) cases.
As per the chargesheet, Mala and Patel took bets through mobile phones as well as through the UK-based website 'betfair.Com'. Sharma used to own master login IDs of this website and gave some of the IDs to Patel and Mala through Bansal brothers.