Six Arrested in Wardha Cricket Betting Bank Account Scam
Wardha police have busted a racket that allegedly used bank accounts opened in citizens’ names for online cricket betting and gambling. Six accused have been arrested so far in the case, which police said involved misleading people into opening accounts and then using those accounts for illegal transactions.
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Complaint Leads To Probe
The case came to light after Pratik Jitendra Lokhande of Borgaon lodged a complaint at Wardha City Police Station. According to the complaint, Tanmay Bhagat and Sunny Holani told him they needed a bank account for finance-related work and arranged for accounts to be opened in the names of the complainant and his friend at IDBI Bank.
Police said the accused then kept the ATM card, passbook, and cheque book with themselves. This is because the complainant claimed that after withdrawing Rs 40,000 from his bank account, he was then threatened by the accused.
Subsequently, he went to the bank and came to know that there were transactions of about Rs 22 lakhs done through his account within a month’s time. That discovery triggered the wider investigation into how the accounts were being used and who else was involved in the racket.
Accounts Sold For Betting Use
During the probe, police found that the accused were allegedly luring needy citizens and students by offering them Rs 2,000 to Rs 3,000 to open bank accounts in their own names. Once the accounts were opened, the related banking documents were allegedly sold to other members of the racket.
Police said those accounts were then used for financial transactions linked to online cricket betting and gambling platforms. The names mentioned in the investigation included Mahadev App, Win Adda, FairPlay, Lotus365, and Reddy Anna.
The complaint and subsequent inquiry pointed to a pattern in which account holders were used as fronts, while the control of the accounts and documents remained with the accused. That arrangement allowed the alleged betting network to move money through accounts that appeared to belong to ordinary citizens.
Six Accused Identified
The arrested accused have been identified as Tanmay Kishore Bhagat, Sunny Manoj Holani, Dipesh Rajkumar Sevlani, Ankur Subhash Jain, Pankaj alias Panku Rajesh Lalwani, and Dipesh Sawaldas Panjwani. Police said all 6 have been taken into custody as part of the ongoing case.
Considering the wider ramifications of the matter, the superintendent of police, Saurabh Kumar Agrawal, transferred the investigation to the Local Crime Branch. That move brought the case under a specialised unit as officers continued to examine the broader network.
According to the police, the racket included many other people apart from this individual, with some located even outside Maharashtra. The process of tracking down the rest of the accused continues.
Wider Network Under Scanner
The case has highlighted how bank accounts opened in the names of ordinary citizens can be diverted for betting-related activity. Police said the alleged racket used this method to carry out online cricket betting and gambling transactions while keeping the actual operators behind the scenes.
With 6 arrests already made and more suspects still being traced, the investigation is continuing into both the local and out-of-state links of the network. The probe remains focused on identifying the full chain of people involved and how the accounts were obtained, sold, and used.
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Source: Times of India
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