Five members of a gang have been arrested in connection with fake IPL tickets by the Marine Drive police.
Five members of a gang have been arrested in connection with fake IPL tickets by the Marine Drive police. During the last IPL match at Wankhede Stadium on April 28, police recovered at least six fake tickets which did not have an authentic bar code. Nearly a month later, the police has busted the racket and recovered 70 more fake tickets the gang was unable to sell. Police officials said the accused produced fake tickets for the IPL match between Mumbai Indians (MI) and Kolkata Knight Riders (KKR) held at Wankhede Stadium on April 28.
The matter came to light when Rohan R. Mohite (25) could not purchase five tickets from the Wankhede counter on April 28 as tickets had been sold out. That’s when the fraudsters approached him and managed to sell fake tickets to him. “Mr Mohite was denied entry into the stadium as the bar code rejected counterfeit tickets while scanning. He then reached Marine Drive police station where he lodged a complaint against unknown persons,” said police officials.
Investigation officer, PSI Sudarshan Patil, of Marine Drive police station said, “The accused produced tickets with the help of designing software on laptops and printed them at a printing shop in Worli. They found Mr Mohite asking for extra tickets outside the stadium and decided to con him. Two members of the gang sold five tickets to Mr Mohite for Rs 2,000 a pop.”
“Through information from sources, we laid a trap for and arrested the accused from Worli area. At least 67 bogus tickets were recovered while they managed to sell 133 such tickets. Still, we did not get any complaints from other people who bought these fake tickets,” said Mr Patil.
DCP Manojkumar Sharma said, “The accused have been identified as Namdev Govind Degde (38), Hitesh Ved (48), mastermind Ibrahim Khan (58), Ketan Dhawre (37), and Praveen Naik (28).
Police have also confiscated one laptop, 67 fake IPL tickets and one pen drive from Mr Naik who is the brain behind this racket and has completed a degree in Mass Media and a designing course. All accused have confessed their crime and have been remanded to police custody till May 30.
