Agencies
MUMBAI,June 12:Rotru, Guru, Jack and Helicopter were not the only ones to enter the bookies' lexicon. Mumbai Crime Branch officials puzzling out the multi-crore IPL betting riddle have uncovered the code that ended all clandestine operations in a jiffy the moment bookies realised cops were at the door. On May 14, the betting syndicate was disbanded in a matter of seconds in the face of a police raid at Kalbadevi, with three brief words: Bhaav ek rupiya. The cryptogram worked like a self-destructive message in sci-fi movies, and all involved in the illegal consortium broke up to drop below the radar. According to Branch officials, when their team forayed the Kalbadevi den of the bookies - the precise location of which has not been disclosed - they recovered 92 phones of which 30 were used to transfer calls to Pakistan, while three were specifically used to transfer calls from Dubai. Interrogation of Ramesh Vyas, who was arrested with fellow bookies Ashok Vyas and Pandurang Kadam that night from the hideout, has revealed that soon after the Branch officers of the Property Cell and the Crime Investigation Unit (CIU) came knocking at his door, he alerted the entire syndicate over the phone line with the code: Bhaav ek rupiya.
"These were the last three words Vyas spoke over the phone, and all the lines got disconnected instantly. At the time of the raid, we could not realise the gravity of these three words. |
