Lucknow, March 25 : The Lucknow police have arrested 12 bookies from a flat in SBI Enclave in the Sushant Golf City area of the state capital.

These bookies were connected to Dubai and their entire business was being conducted through Telegram app, said officials, adding that the arrests were made on Sunday.

They were operating online betting games on IPL matches.

The police have recovered 45 mobile phones, five laptops and other items from them. An amount of Rs 10 lakh has been found in half a dozen bank accounts of the accused, which have been frozen by the police. The betting game was being operated from Dubai.

DCP South, Tej Swaroop Singh, said that information was received about online betting on IPL matches in a flat of an apartment named SBI Enclave located in Sushant Golf City area.

On receiving information, a police team raided and arrested 12 people from there. Police recovered 45 mobile phones, five laptops, two tablets, six cheque books, two passbooks, 14 Aadhar cards, two PAN cards, 21 debit and one credit cards from the spot.

The DCP said that the accused, in the age group of 19 to 29 years, gave their names as Rohan Gop, Ashish Kumar Singh, Shubham Kumar, Jackie Kumar, Vijay Vawri, Prabhat Kumar, Rahul Rai, Bittu Kumar Shah, Rahul Kumar, Deepak Sharma, Eklavya Kumar Nishad and Vijay Kumar.

The DCP has also announced a reward of Rs 25,000 for the police team that catches the bookies.

ADCP South Shashank Singh said that the arrested fraudsters were running the betting business online. The accused contacted people through the Telegram app. After this the bookies send QR codes to the people for transactions. People sent money to the fraudsters through its QR code and then the bookies invested their money in IPL.

The person who invested money got online points, which he could encash anytime. Inquiries have revealed that the bookies' network extends to Bengaluru, Chandigarh and Kolkata.

In the investigation conducted so far, Rs 10 lakh of fraud has been found in different bank accounts of the accused. ADCP said that all the accounts have been frozen at present.

The ADCP further said that so far, 25 complaints have been registered against the accused on the NCRB portal.

/IANS