Hot Tip Of The Iceberg

DULL and defiant highrise blocks dotting the bleak Howrah landscape have long been synonymous with sleaze and vice. So when a 'source' rushed to its additional superintendent of police (town) Rajesh Kumar's home the afternoon of September 28 with a hot tip that frenetic cricket betting was on at Sree Apartments in the neighbourhood, the frazzled young officer wasn't exactly surprised. But when Kumar entered the ninth-floor apartment of Om Prakash Dhanuka an hour later with two cops in plainclothes, the scene left him stunned. "It was like a noisy, busy office on a lazy Sunday afternoon," he recalls.

Seven men crowding the airconditioned drawing room of the 600 sq-ft apartment ran around receiving calls by the minute on six telephones connected to tape recorders. Then they shouted out the bets, which another man dutifully punched into a 1.2 gigabyte personal computer. A 29-inch Thompson television spewed out images of the India-Pakistan one-dayer in Hyderabad at ear-splitting volume. Computer floppies and audio tapes lay strewn around. When Kumar picked up the ever-ringing phones, he heard people booking bets at 10 paise in favour of Pakistan. Ten per cent of the callers were women.

 It took a few minutes for the cops to fig-ure out that they had stumbled on to one of the hottest betting rackets in the country. The seven men surrendered meekly. Dhanuka, the Rajasthan-born kingpin of this seedy suburban betting nub, was the prize catch. Another big catch was Basant Kumar Dujari, aka Jhabru. The booty: the betting paraphernalia plus two cellphones and four SIM cards, 100 audio tapes, some Rs 22,000 in cash, and loads of printouts. "It's an extremely significant breakthrough," says Howrah superintendent of police Surajit Kar Purakayastha.

Seems so. As investigations progressed through the week, they threw up some startling insights into the impressive scale of a cricket betting operation. The hundreds of incoming calls from punters to Dhanuka's place were routed through different numbers via an elaborate call transfer system to eliminate easy detection. Questions were raised whether Dhanuka greased palms at the local telephone exchange to secure six telephone connections, but the bookie insists the connections are legit under the Own Your Telephone scheme and in the names of his wife and other family members.

The most sensational find, however, of the Howrah bust-up, say investigators, is the list of over 500 punters gleaned from information contained in the floppies—90 per cent of them have been decoded—and printouts seized from Dhanuka's apartment. They contain names of some top Calcutta-based businessmen, industrialists and stockbrokers. Their bets are also recorded on audiotapes. "It's an amazing list, a veritable who's who of businessmen and industrialists who punt regularly," says an investigator. The police discreetly checked out the residences of "seven to eight businessmen" mentioned in the list, but were told by relatives that they were vacationing in Nepal, Delhi and Mumbai. While the police are still not releasing the list to the public, coming weeks are likely to see some of the city's rich and famous being questioned.

But the focus of the probe is Dhanuka, a 56-year-old matriculate from Churu who arrived in Calcutta in 1959. He did odd jobs till a few years ago when he became a sub-broker at the Calcutta Stock Exchange and a horse racing bookie. He told investigators that he had jumped into the 'lucrative' cricket betting out of this highrise flat two years ago. Dhanuka had been arrested twice by the Calcutta Police (CP) during the past two years for betting, but set free with light charges under the West Bengal Gambling and Prize Competition Act 1957, where the maximum punishment is a three-year prison term and a Rs 2,000 fine. The bookie also confesses to have known Jai Chand Sethia, a bigtime satta player- turned-bookie of central Calcutta.

But no less important is Jhabru, a 33-year-old second generation, Purulia-born matriculate who's been a cricket bookie for most of his life. He was also arrested once by CP a year ago for betting, but let off for a paltry fine. Jhabru's name has come up in Justice Chandrachud's investigations into countrywide cricket betting. "I am a big bookie," he confessed to the police. "But then there are a few more like me in Calcutta."

 Which is possibly true. Dhanuka and Jha-bru gave the police the names of some 15 'top' bookies in Calcutta, including Kamal Bagri, Atma Ram Martiya and Ashok Ladia. But when the police raided their workstations and homes in Howrah and Calcutta through the week, they discovered all had fled. Many are reported to be in Kathmandu. The bookies evidently network well. Within 10 minutes of the Sunday crackdown, even the callers at Dhanuka's apartment had begun to sense that something had gone horribly wrong. "Keya koin lafda hoye geya keyan?" asked a tense caller to an officer posing as a bookie.

In Mumbai, the fallout of the Howrah raid was tangible. For the second Indo-Pak encounter, one of the big bookies, Shoban Kala-chowki (all bookies have their areas as their alias), did not operate. And because of the defaulting on payment by several Mum-bai betters, the action has shifted to Delhi which is emerging as a more important centre than Mumbai. But a major development in Mumbai has been the induction of former stockbrokers. Says a Delhi punter: "Not many people can understand the odds business. To run the business you need even more sharpness. Besides, with the stock scene being dull, many see greater opportunity in running a bookie den." Delhi Police itself has not been very active in cracking down on gambling dens. This is mainly due to an ad-hoc policy. While till a month back this was under the purview of the assistant commissioner of police (crime), the subject is now dealt with by the ACP (railways) and lacks a godfather to follow leads on the bookies. Says ACP (crime) Shyam Singh: "These days, with crime moving onto cellphones, it's become nearly impossible to operate without getting help from mobile phone companies.

But they are slow in providing information. Sometimes they don't keep numbers we give them under observation." Smaller centres like Bangalore, on the other hand, manage to escape the arm of the law because of the minor scale of their operations. Only a small number of Bangalore bookies pooled their bets in Calcutta. After the Howrah raids the bookies who pooled their bets through Calcutta have now switched to Mumbai, Delhi and Dubai.

But the police are active in Jaipur. A raid was conducted on October 3 in a bookie's den operating from a commercial complex in the walled city. The police arrested four persons, seized tape recorders, a VCR, a TV and accounts of the operation. The culprits tried in vain to flee after locking the door.

As for Howrah, investigations reveal that at least Rs 1 crore was recorded in bets during every cricket match at Dhanuka's workstation. On September 28, some Rs 1.17 crore in bets had already been recorded when the cops arrived. But the bookie insists he's small fry compared to his Mumbai counterparts. "Mumbai is the hub, while the rates are fixed in Dubai and London," Dhanuka told the police. He and Jhabru have named nine top bookies of Mumbai, Delhi and Jaipur, but insist that they have never met any Indian or Pakistani cricketers. Jhabru denies reports that he had met some Pakistani cricketers and a Bengali starlet at a dinner in a Loudon Street house in south Calcutta on the eve of the Pak-Sri Lanka Independence Cup final in May.

 Interestingly, Jhabru is the same bookie whom a Star TV commentator helped by arranging for the admission of his son in a Calcutta convent school. The commentator had told Outlook, "Only I know his real name. These people have dealt with odds since they were five years old. Their entire talent lies in this. I myself see this as a very adult business. They don't force people to bet with them. I think our laws that deal with betting are outdated and we should change them."

Clearly, the Dhanuka crackdown is just the tip of the iceberg of a betting trail which definitely leads to other Indian cities and abroad. A multipronged investigation involving the CBI and the Enforcement Directorate to unravel the tangled skein of money transfers would surely help matters. As ACP Kumar, who has a doctorate in financial management, says: "This really calls for a thorough nationwide professionally competent investigation." Watch this space.