Bangladesh police has arrested an individual suspected to be involved in the betting industry during the World T20, for the third time in less than a month. Sub-Inspector Enamul Haq of Mirpur police station filed a case against Atanu Dutta, an Indian citizen, with the police station under Section 54 of the Criminal Procedure Code (a law which allows police to arrest without a warrant).
On all three occasions, Dutta had been arrested for aiding betting, which is illegal in Bangladesh, through phone calls to India and the UAE, allegedly talking on his phone to bookies in those countries.
Dutta is the first Indian to be arrested specifically under the charge of aiding betting in Bangladesh, after another Indian called Durga Prasad was thrown out of the stadium during last year’s BPL and admitted later that he is a Hyderabad-based bookie. This third arrest, within the space of three weeks, marks a significant catch for Bangladesh police. A regular visitor to Bangladesh for the last three years, Dutta has been spotted in the stadium during matches since the 2011 World Cup. He was also seen in Bangladesh’s tours to Zimbabwe and Sri Lanka during the same period. He has been in Bangladesh since the Sri Lanka series in January, as well as the Asia Cup and World T20 since the first round. During the second edition of the BPL, he was quizzed by the BCB’s security chief but was let off due to lack of evidence.
The police state that they have proof of Dutta’s contact with suspected bookies in India after they tapped his phone after his first release on March 21.
The BCB declined to comment on the matter when the news broke, related to the arrest of a bookie who had been first apprehended by detectives inside the Shere Bangla National Stadium in Mirpur on March 21. The BCB said that since the World T20 was an ICC event, it fell under the ACSU’s jurisdiction to shed light on the matter.
Dutta’s latest arrest comes less than a week after he was granted bail by a Dhaka court on April 7, after being arrested on April 6 in Dhaka although some other newspaper reports claim that he was arrested on April 3 in Benapole (a town 240km southwest of Dhaka on the Bangladesh-India border) while trying to cross over to India.
After being quizzed by detectives on March 21 during the World T20 match between India and Pakistan, he was released. Upon being arrested a second time earlier this month, Rapid Action Battalion (RAB), a law-enforcing agency in the country which had filed a case against him under the Information and Communication Technology (ICT) Act, tried to get a 7-day remand but the court rejected the appeal and granted him bail.
Source: CricInfo
