GUNTUR: Guntur Rural police on Sunday arrested a cricket betting software vendor and seized Rs 7 lakh, two laptops, four smartphones, one gold chain and a gold bracelet. The arrested was identified as Abhir Chand of Dinhata city in Cooch Behar district of West Bengal State.

Disclosing the details to media, Guntur Rural SP SV Rajasekhar Babu said that on May 4, Sattenapalli police arrested four persons for organising online cricket betting.

The arrested were identified as Pasupuleti Nagaraju of Rajupalem, Avadesh Pratap Singh alias Kabir, Ankit Dwivedi and Divyanshu Singh of Madhya Pradesh and seized `22.15 lakh, 26 smartphones, one laptop and ATM cards from them.

The four persons purchased two cricket betting websites from Abhir Chand and created a WhatsApp group. They collected Rs 22 lakh from 226 punters.

Abhir Chand with the help of Kolkata-based software developer Sayan Ghosh designed cricket betting websites. As many as 400 sub-bookies and punters were working under Abhir Chand from Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, Karnataka, Gujarat, New Delhi, Madhya Pradesh, Tamil Nadu and West Bengal States.

He gave access to two online websites www.lotus.com and www.dream24.com at a cost of `25,000 each per month. Police are conducting thorough investigation to nab the other accused.ASP S Varadaraju, Sattenapalli DSP V Kaleshavali Rao and other police personnel participated.