Gujarat Police has arrested four members of the gang. (representative photo)
In a bizarre incident, a gang in Gujarat committed an elaborate forgery by creating a fake Indian Premier League (IPL) tournament and tricking Russian punters into betting money on such cricket matches.
The incident took place in a remote farm in Molipur village of Mehsana district. The scam was busted by the police and four gang members were arrested just before the quarter-final stage of the alleged “Indian Premier Cricket League”.
According to the police, the fake matches started three weeks after the actual IPL ended in May. Matches were broadcast live on YouTube and bets were placed by bookmakers on their “official” Telegram channel.
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To create the impression of a tournament such as the IPL, the Grifters set up a cricket pitch, which had “border lines and halogen lamps”. He even hired 20 farm laborers and unemployed local youth for Rs 400 per game, and made them wear IPL teams jerseys, so that they could do almost perfect thugs.
“In addition, the accused had installed high-resolution cameras on the ground and used computer-generated graphics to display the score on the live-streaming screen,” Police Inspector Bhavesh Rathod said. AFP,
Police said that the players came alternately wearing jerseys of Chennai Super Kings, Mumbai Indians and Gujarat Titans. He also revealed that crowd noise sound effects were downloaded from the internet and walkie-talkies were also used during mock matches by the umpires to make the tournament appear authentic.
According to PTIThe scam was organized by Shoaib Davda, who worked in Russia and had recently returned to his native place, Mollipur. The other three accused have been identified as Kolu Mohd, Sadiq Dawda and Mohd Saqib. All four have been arrested.
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Asif Mohammad has also been accused of plotting the scam. “During the live streaming of matches on his YouTube channel, Asif, sitting in Russia, placed bets with bookies,” Rathod said. “He is still in Russia and wanted in this case,” Rathod said.
Further, the police inspector said that a quarter-final match was being played when the department received a tip-off and the racket was busted. Rathod said the first installment of bets worth Rs 3 lakh from Russia has already been received by the group running the fake betting racket.
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