Inter-state gambling racket busted; 5 held

Five persons were arrested in connection with an inter-state gambling racket operating through customised computer software, police said today.
The computer application was popular by the name 'Company' and the accused have been identified as Kulwinder Singh (50), a Delhi University graduate, Inderpal (43), Pradeep Chopra (39), Sandeep Sehgal (41) and Rajeev Anand (39), police said.
Police have recovered around Rs 90 lakh of stake money, several mobile phones and three laptops with the customised software, DCP (Special Cell) Sanjeev Yadav said.
The racket had its main office in northwest Delhi's Pitampura area and operated here and in states like Punjab, Haryana, Himachal Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh, police said.

Based on a tip-off, police raided the Pitampura office on Saturday and arrested four accused. They told police about their associate Anand based in Khanna town in Punjab. A team was sent there and Anand was nabbed, although his main aide, identified as one Manoj, is still at large, police said.
Anand is said to be a gambler of Punjab who has been active for around 20 years and had more than a dozen cases registered against him, police said.
"The customised software works like a lottery. The accused used to take calls from their clients who staked money by choosing random numbers. They used to forward the calls upward in the hierarchy which operated the functioning of the application named 'Company'," said a senior official.

The racket used to declare one winner every day and the winning amount could go up to 100 times the call value. The racket charged 10 per cent commission on every call, the official added.