Four members of Shillong Teer gambling ring arrested
The ring described its activities as an archery-based lottery
The Detective Branch (DB) of Dhaka Metropolitan Police (DMP) has arrested four members of an online gambling racket, called Shillong Teer, in different parts of Dhaka and Netrokona.
Mir Modasser Hossain, deputy commissioner of the DB (Cyber and Special Crime Division) of DMP, confirmed it on Wednesday.
According to its website, Shillong Teer is an archery-based lottery that is conducted by the Khasi Hills Archery Sports Association, which is a group of 12 archery clubs from a particular locality of Assam.
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Every day, 50 archers shoot 30 arrows each at 3:45 pm and 20 arrows in the second round at 4:45 pm.
Md Najmul Hoque, senior assistant commissioner of the Organized Crime Investigation Team, said the arrested individuals are Md Shamim Miah, 30, Md Abdul Ali, 31, Md Ershad Miah, 29, and Md Shohag Miah, 27.
Police also seized: six mobile phone sets, one register book, four charts with lottery numbers from 1 to 99 written on them, and five unused charts from their possession.
AC Najmul said, "Shillong Teer gambling was first started in Indian Shillong and Guwahati in 1990. Later this gambling rapidly spread to the Sylhet region. Eventually, the gambling reached different parts of the country including the Kishoreganj and Netrokona district."
Upon receiving a tip-off, a team of DB's Organized Crime Investigation Team led by Senior AC Najmul conducted a raid in the capital's Gulshan area and nabbed Shamim and Abdul Ali, two members of the ring, on August 24.
As per their information, the police team later conducted a raid in Kalmakanda Upazila of Netrokona district on August 25 and arrested Ershad and Shohag, two agents, from the area.
During primary interrogation, the arrested agents of the Shillong Teer ring admitted that the Indian gamblers had appointed their local agents in Bangladesh. Later Bangladeshi agents appointed their salesmen across the country. These salesmen lured in ordinary people and hooked them on Shillong Teer gambling.
They use India-based website www.teertoday.com for online gambling. Salesmen communicate with the local agents to buy the numbers from 1 to 99.
Later, gamblers buy these numeric numbers from the salesmen for different sums of money. Agents take money from the salesmen against these sold numbers.
Lottery for the gambling is held at 4:00pm every day, except Sunday, and one number is declared the winner. The buyer of the number is supposed to be awarded eighty times the money he paid for buying it, but most of the gamblers lose all their money.
All the transactions are completed through mobile banking.
Salesmen collect money from the gamblers. They take their commission and send the rest of the money to the agents.
Staying in the capital Dhaka, Shamim and Abdul Ali collected money from all the salesmen. They later sent the money to Ershad and Shohagin in Netrokona. The money was sent to India through a money laundering process.
