Pune Police Crime Branch Unit 3 have nabbed a bookie for taking bets during an IPL match between Kolkata Knight Riders and Royal Challengers Bangalore on Thursday, April 6. The police also seized a mobile phone worth Rs 7,000 from the bookie.

The arrested individual was identified as a resident of Lohegaon, Pune, named Akash Dharampal Goyal. According to information obtained by ACP Sunil Pawar of the Crime Branch and Sr. PI Shirhari Bahirat of Unit 3, Goyal was accepting bets and forwarding it to the illegal betting app Mahadev Book, according to policenama.

Further investigations are currently underway by the police. An FIR has been registered, and the arrested individual have been charged under section 12(A) of the Maharashtra Gambling Act.

Durg police also recently achieved massive success in the Mahadev bookcase by arresting one of the people managing several accounts that were used to launder money from betting and transferred to Dubai.

These operators lure in people with heavy returns and collect their identification, which is used to open a banned account later and link with Mahadev’s book ID. These accounts are then used to do several thousand crores of transactions yearly.

The operation of the Mahadev book betting app has increased significantly due to the IPL season. Even prior to the start of IPL, several cases of people using bank accounts to launder money for Mahadev Book and taking bets were surfacing across Chhattisgarh and Maharashtra.

While police have started focusing heavily on these illegal activities and have done several arrests, there are still many kingpins on the loose. These individuals are trained in Dubai, where the mastermind of the Mahadev book betting app ‘Saurabh Chandrakar’ is residing.