MANSHARAM was a regular guy. He worked hard, drank little and loved his wife and three kids. Till Bhutan Lotteries entered his life a month back. A life he lost in trying to recover a Rs 50,000 debt through the only means he knew of getting rich fast. On January 12, he ended up killing his three children, his wife and hung himself with Rs 6,000 and some lottery tickets in his pocket.
In the last one-and-a-half months, Bhopal has witnessed 14 lottery-related suicides. But the political establishment, district administration and even the judiciary are yet to react sanely. An estimated 60,000 people of the nearly 2.5 lakh living in the slums and low-income houses of Bhopal are believed to be players in the lottery market which has taken the shape of organised satta and matka in a legal garb.
Bapurao, 25; Surendra, 30; Joseph, 40; Niraj Patil, 18all tried to rise above their low-income background and strike it rich. They succeeded in doubling their investments initially, but as that turned into heavy borrowings, lottery became a desperate, fatal passion. Bapurao became its first victim when he hung himself with with a rubber cycle tube in early December.
Even though lottery's been banned in the past, and lottery of other states isn't allowed in Madhya Pradesh, the Indo-Bhutan pact on the sale of that country's lottery ensures Bhutan Lotteries does roaring business. The Jabalpur High Court has been approached several times but the pact seems to help distributors obtain stay orders. The latest was obtained only three days before Mansharam's suicide even though Bhopal SP Sanjeev Singh gave the court a list of nine lottery-related deaths till then.
Armed with a stay order from the high court restraining the administration from banning lottery sale, local agents have been rolling in cash while daily labourers and petty businessmen invest hard-earned cash in daily draws. The addiction is so widespread that nearly all other trades are suffering. The lower income group no longer goes for movies, eats at roadside joints, works as daily labourers at building sites or even seeks daily employment. There have been representations from all trades to state excise and law minister Satyanarain Sharma to ban lotteries immediately.
This has become such a nuisance that we've been forced to shift vendors to points outside the city, says Singh. The biggest prize on a daily draw is a mere Rs 1,000 but if one gets the last digit of a series right he can multiply his investment 10-fold. Thus if the digit 8 is drawn on a particular day, then a Rs 10 investment becomes Rs 100the possibility of the last digit being right is infinitely more than the whole series of six-odd digits being so.
Insiders in the police establishment concede that lottery has deteriorated into satta. The sale of tickets itself resembles a satta structure with the sole selling agent at the top, five sub-agents under him and 15 vendors at the bottom rung. The sole agent pays a minimum guaranteed amount to the Bhutan Lotteries agent in Delhi; in turn he recovers it and profits from his sub-agents. At least four draws are held every day between
9 am to 12 noon. Legitimate lottery becomes a satta when a particular digit is in heavy demand and vendors run out of stocks. Then they simply book numbers and amounts against the players' names with no actual sale of tickets. An hour before the draw the most favoured number is relayed to the sole agent who ensures it doesn't open.
The remarkable thing about Bhutan Lotteries is that the craze and deaths are confined to Bhopal. It confirms allegations of a well-organised network. The sole agent is the owner of a Urdu daily and is believed to be netting in close to Rs 10 lakh daily. Money is all that matters; who cares for deaths of innocents who believe in the legendary fairness of illegal deals?
