Bets go online now

However,the website remains accessible and was used by bookies for a major chunk of their betting on IPL matches.

Sources in betting circles alleged that eight prominent bookies Ashwin Agarwal alias Tinku Delhi who has been arrested by the Delhi Police; Sunil Abhichandi alias Sunil Dubai,Mukesh Kumar Gupta alias MK alias Mukesh Delhi who was involved in the 1999-2000 India-South Africa match-fixing scandal; Lalchand Dubai,who is the brother-in-law of top bookie Shobhan Mehta; Kiran Ahmedabad; Chhota Nagpur; Murad Hyderabad and Sikandar Jaipur operate master accounts on betfair.com and have created sub-accounts and provided their passwords to sub-dealers in India and Pakistan.

These sub-dealers in turn provide access on the web site to bookies and punters. Accounts are then settled through hawala channels. After the Mumbai Police began cracking down on gambling in 2009,it found that bookies had shifted their operations online. Investigators learnt that prominent bookies had acquired accounts on betfair.com.

The police took up the matter with the state government. Again in May 2012,when the Mumbai Police busted a major cricket betting den in suburban Kandivali,they found that bookies were placing bets on the web site. On June 24,2009,R N Deshmukh,joint secretary in the Maharashtra home department,wrote to the director,Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT),Delhi,requesting the website be blocked. In the letter,a copy of which is with The Indian Express,the home department official wrote: I am directed to inform you that transmission of text,image from below mentioned link (www.betfair.com) has the potential of instigating people of India for gambling and betting which may cause hawala transactions of crores of rupees to foreign countries. I am further directed to request you that transmission of above web site should be blocked from all ISPs based in India immediately. The letter is issued with the approval of additional chief secretary (home),government of Maharashtra.

Again,on November 23,2009,Deshmukh wrote to Harshaprabha Aggarwal,assistant controller (technology),department of IT,Ministry of Communications and IT,and said: The deputy commissioner of police (preventive),CID Mumbai,has now by his letter dated 16.11.2009,requested that the blocking of http://www.betfair.com be done under Section 69 of IT Act,2000. You are therefore requested to take necessary steps in this matter.

PIL filed

The same year,a public interest litigation was filed in the Bombay High Court urging that the website be blocked. A division bench of Justices FI Rebello and J H Bhatia took note of Deshmukh’s communication with CERT and passed on order on March 10,2010,directing CERT to take action within three months. But Gulshan Rai,Director General of CERT,got back to the state government saying its request could not be fulfilled.

The case was examined within the ambit of the provisions of the IT Act (section 69A and the rules published therein). The examination was on the basis of information provided by Maharashtra government and Mumbai Police.

The committee set up under the rules notified under section 69A recommended that based on the facts and data provided by the Maharashtra government and Mumbai Police,violation of section 69A of the IT Act was not established. This was communicated to government of Maharashtra and also to Mumbai Police, Rai told The Indian Express in an email response.

Betfair.com did not respond to questions from The Indian Express.