Gujarat police probing Rs 1,400 crore transactions by bookies

Ahmedabad, Feb 4 (IANS) The Ahmedabad Detection Crime Branch has unearthed a racket where bookies, under fake names, opened accounts in 20 banks and in Ahmedabad and did transactions worth Rs 1400 crore.

Deputy Commissioner of Police Chaitanya Mandlik told the media that, "Police had learned that a bank account was opened in the name of Aakash Oza with Indusind Bank's Odhav branch, without the permission of Aakash. His identity papers were used and his signature was forged. From this bank account Rs 170 crore worth transactions had taken place between April 2022 and July 2022."

Investigations revealed that a bookie named Mehul Pujara had opened many such bank accounts in various firms names like Shree Shakti Enterprise, Nova Enterprise, and many others, from which accounts transactions worth at least Rs 1414 crore were carried out.

During the investigations the police found that one of the accused, Ashik alias Ravi Patel, had come in contact when he and another accused Karmesh Patel took Aakash's personal documents to get a bank loan for him. Those documents were used by Ravi, Karmesh, Rakesh Rajdev, Khannaji and Harikrishna Patel to open many bank accounts, which were used for money transfer to Dubai for the payment of Satta money, read the FIR.

The police officer said a FIR was filed on Thursday. As some bookies are running the operation from Dubai, the department will send a request to the Union Home Ministry to issue a look out notice against them.