By IANS,
Ludhiana : Punjab Police Tuesday claimed to have busted an inter-state lottery racket worth crores of rupees with the arrest of 13 people here.
Nearly Rs.1.16 crore, 34 mobile phones, one laptop and a high-tech box with the facility of recording incoming phone calls were recovered from their possession, police said.
“Based on a tip-off, our special investigation teams raided five places in Punjab, Haryana and Chandigarh simultaneously yesterday (Monday) and arrested 13 people,” Ludhiana Deputy Commissioner of Police Parmod Ban told IANS.
He said those arrested were a part of a gang of nearly 350 people, spread over various northern states. They were involved in a single-digit lottery system.
“They are involved in an illegal lottery trade. They were not paying any tax to the government. We are probing whether the accused were also getting money from abroad in this business,” he said.
According to police, the gang was active in Jammu and Kashmir, Punjab, Haryana, Himachal Pradesh, Delhi, Uttarakhand, Chhattisgarh, Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh.
“They were running a business of over Rs.20 crore and had directly hired over 300 employees while over 600 persons were indirectly involved in this business. They used to hold draws three times in a day,” said another police officer.
Ludhiana, the industrial hub of Punjab, is around 100 km from Chandigarh.