Yet another IPL betting racket busted, this time in Kanpur

The menace of betting continues to plague the Indian Premier League (IPL). A day after the Delhi Daredevils and Gujarat Lions encounter in a mouthwatering encounter at the Green Park Stadium in Kanpur, police have arrested three bookies from the largest Uttar Pradesh city, who were operating from the Landmark Hotel, where the two teams were putting up.

Delhi Daredevils beat the Gujarat Lions in the 50th match of IPL 2017 which was a dead rubber given the fact that both the teams do not stand any chance of the playoffs. Media reports suggested that a sudden raid was done in the hotel last night, and policed tracked the mastermind recognised by the name Ramesh Shah.

Shah was arrested along with three other bookies. Police revealed that Shah’s network extends to all the primary stadiums in India, from where information regarding the nature of tracks is passed to him.

As per Sportskeeda names of the other two arrested are Vikas Chauhan, a local of Pukhrayan, a village in Kanpur Dehat, and Ramesh (he shares the name with the mastermind), who belongs to Chunniganj. Ramesh worked as a labourer inside the Kanpur stadium and sent information about the nature of the pitch to Shah.

BCCI Anti-Corruption Bureau gets in the act

This is not the first news of betting coming during this IPL. Recently, a Bangladeshi man lost his life after he wasn’t given the money he earned on winning a bet over an IPL game. The BCCI Anti-Corruption Bureau was tracking these bookies for three days and were waiting for the right moment to catch them. Two people were taken into custody from room 1733 on the 17th floor of the hotel, where three mobile phones, Rs.40 lakh and a dairy were seized.

Betting is very rampant in the country, but only a few cases manage to come to the fore. Until and unless betting is eradicated completely, spot-fixing may continue to hamper the progress of the IPL and cricket on the whole.