MUMBAI - They're swift. They're stealthy.
They work round-the-clock out of cars, posh apartments and even five-star hotels as India's excitement over cricket reaches fever pitch in a land where the game is almost a religion.
Cellphones tucked between head and shoulder and fingers flying over computer keyboards, bookmakers in India's financial
heart, Mumbai (formerly Bombay), track the flood of bets as the national team battles it out at the World Cup.
Although betting is illegal in India, it has reached unprecedented levels in Mumbai since the cup began two weeks ago, police say.
"The whole atmosphere is so charged," said Shridhar Vagal, joint commissioner of police.
"It's difficult to contain [because] bookies have become highly mobile."
Betting is also rampant across the country. But in Mumbai, the stakes are much higher - at least 10 billion rupees ($378 million) were bet on every match, said Vagal.
He estimated the city had more than 100,000 punters and more than 100 bookmakers for cricket alone.
The bookies, careful not to stay in one place too long, use cellphones in cars and vans.
The bigger ones work out of posh apartments coding bets on computers. Some even check into five-star hotels to avoid suspicion.
About 25 bookmakers have been arrested in a crackdown over the past two weeks but the sweep hardly dented the business: the maximum fine is just 1000 rupees and most of the arrested are released on bail.
Indian bookies hit the headlines three years ago when allegations of match-fixing shook the cricket world.
Former South African captain Hansie Cronje, who died last year in a plane crash, admitted accepting US$130,000 ($234,000) in bribes from bookies to influence matches.
After the scandal broke, Indian cricket authorities banned former captain Mohammad Azharuddin and test batsman Ajay Sharma over match-fixing allegations.
Mumbai police are particularly concerned about the power of organised crime bosses who have fled the country but run extortion and gambling rackets by "remote control".
"Big-time organised cricket betting is run and controlled by these gangsters based mainly in Dubai and Karachi," said a senior Central Bureau of Investigation official.
Besides raking in millions of rupees, the gangsters offer protection to big bookies.
"You can't even begin to imagine the kind of money we make," said a bookie who did not wish to be named.
"Gold and diamond merchants here think nothing of sinking a few million rupees in bets."
W. H. Khan, a 24-year-old software professional, bets with one of the city's biggest bookies, who works out of buildings he owns in south Mumbai with private guards to ensure strangers do not stray in when a match is on.
Khan never bets more than 500 rupees a time. But he is hooked.
"It's like an addiction. When you win it's such a high."
REUTERS
World Cup schedule
Points table
Cricket: India's bookies stay step ahead
MUMBAI - They're swift. They're stealthy.
They work round-the-clock out of cars, posh apartments and even five-star hotels as India's excitement over cricket reaches fever pitch in a land where the game is almost a religion.
Cellphones tucked between head and shoulder and fingers flying over computer keyboards, bookmakers in India's financial
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