PSL final: Karachi police arrest 15 suspected bookies in DHA raid

Police have arrested 15 suspected bookies from the upscale Defence neighbourhood who were allegedly planning to take bets for the upcoming final match of the Pakistan Super League (PSL).

Darakhshan police officials said on Sunday that they had received information about a gang of bookies operating out of a bungalow in Phase-V of the Defence Housing Authority. Acting on the information, Station House Officer (SHO) Aurangzeb Khattak assembled a police party and led them in a raid on the house located on Street 19, Khayaban-e-Janbaz.

After brief resistance, the police team arrested 15 men. They were later identified as Taimur, Zia Abbas, Zaheer Abbas, Fahad Dedi, Waqas, Faraz, Muhammad Ali, Faisal Patni, Ghulam Qadir, Waqar, Atif, Zulfiqar, Faisal, Jafar and Farhan.

The accused were taken to the police station for interrogation and further investigation. During a thorough search of the bungalow, law enforcers found Rs363,000, approximately Rs300,000 in UAE dirhams, three laptops, 39 mobile phones and other items relating to gambling and bookmaking.

SHO Khattak said the suspects revealed during the interrogation that they had been planning to take bets for the upcoming PSL final match, which is scheduled to be held in Karachi’s National Stadium on March 25, adding that the group had gathered at the bungalow for collecting money.

The accused also disclosed that their customers from Dubai as well as others had been in touch with them and that the dirhams recovered during the raid had been sent to them by a man named Fahad from Dubai, added the officer.

Khattak said the detainees were in the habit of changing houses regularly. He said that around a year ago, after quarrelling among themselves, someone had attempted to attack their bungalow with a grenade, but the bomb had accidentally been hurled inside another house, following which they changed houses.

The accused had once rented the same bungalow for organising parties and other events, said the SHO, adding that the police team had also recovered a substantial quantity of hashish and cocaine from the house during the raid.

Investigation sources said that until now, gambling to the tune of more than a billion rupees had been indulged in during the current edition of PSL, adding that the money had been transferred via hawala and Hundi to Dubai, India and other parts of the world.

Conman arrested

Officials of National Accountability Bureau Karachi on Sunday claimed to have arrested an impersonator who had swindled several people, including government officials from Sindh and Punjab, out of millions of rupees.

According to a spokesperson for the graft watchdog, the suspect Shehzad Yousaf had been pretending to be an assistant director at NAB and had been using the aliases Imran and Shehryar.

An accountability court has sent Yousaf on a nine-day physical remand, the spokesperson said.

He added that during interrogation, the suspect revealed that he has been blackmailing several Sindh and Punjab government officials on the pretext that NAB had initiated corruption cases against them.

The victims deposited large amounts of money in four of his bank accounts maintained in Karachi and Sahiwal, from where he used to withdraw cash. According to the spokesperson, the total transactions conducted from his accounts amount to more than Rs25 million.

The suspect further said that he had been frequently targeting Karachi Development Authority officials as well as local government officials as he found them to be more responsive to his blackmailing.

The spokesperson said that Yousaf initially demanded a bribe on Rs500,000 to Rs1 million and would ask his victims to send them through bank transfers. However, he was about to cash out a Rs3 million bribe he had demanded of a victim through a bank draft when NAB managed to intervene and arrest him.

The spokesperson urged the public to exercise caution when someone tries to blackmail them pretending to be NAB officers. He also asked people who may have fallen prey to Yousaf to contact the NAB Karachi office to assist in the case.