CHITTOOR: The Chittoor Rural police on Saturday nabbed three illegal operatives of inter-State lottery tickets and seized Rs 4.5 lakh from them, raiding their houses at various locations in Chittoor town.
Addressing a press conference here, Circle-Inspector (Rural-East) S. Chandrasekhar said that following public complaints about large-scale sale of lottery tickets of other States through agents in the district, Superintendent of Police Ghattamaneni Srinivas formed special teams for intensified surveillance. In this process, a special party led by him spotted a local person, Rangaraju, moving suspiciously at Murakambattu locality on the outskirts of Chittoor, and took him into custody. A bag containing Rs 2 lakh cash, 15 lottery tickets from the North-east region, some papers with lottery results was seized from him. Based on information provided by him., two other operatives — Chitti and Tyagaraju — were nabbed from two locations in Chittoor town, and an amount of Rs 2.5 lakh was seized in the raids, apart from some documents.
Mr. Chandrasekhar said that during investigation, it was revealed that one Dinesh, a native of Madanapalle, is the prime operative in Chittoor district, with concentration all over the western mandals. “Taking advantage of the rampant rural poverty, this illegal trade is fast spreading there, adversely impacting the lifestyle of the agrarian poor, and ruining several lives. We have despatched several special parties to vulnerable areas to zero in on the prime accused and a dozen agents working under him,” he said.
The Inspector said that the lottery agents had also targeted the urban poor and several prospective individuals in various towns in the district. In order to carry out their illegal transactions running into crores of rupees, and to announce the lottery results, the accused used the services of Whatsapp, messaging, and websites. “A case under sections dealing with cyber crimes has been booked against the three accused, and they have been sent for remand after production before the Chittoor court,” Mr Chandrasekhar said. He appealed to the public not to get lured by the lotteries, and sought their cooperation in putting an end to the menace.
