"A Matter of Chance" continues.....


As the word spread about the Pritam Kumar Razak lottery fraud case, many more complainants who had been cheated similarly began to approach the Crime Branch. During the investigation of each case, newer and more bizarre ways employed by the lottery operators to cheat people began to emerge. One such case was that of Jasminder Singh, a resident of Bhagat Singh Market in New Delhi, who had won a prize in a daily draw of the Jeevan Rekha lottery, ostensibly run under the aegis of the Government of Manipur.

When Jasminder approached the lottery owners with his winning ticket, he was informed that there had been a mistake in the printing of the results in the newspapers. It was claimed that the results of Jeevan Rekha and Vijay Rekha had been erroneously interchanged, and it was an innocent printing error. Usually, when a purchaser of lottery tickets reads in the papers that his ticket number has not figured in the list of prizes, he destroys the tickets. Now, with this interchanging of the results many genuine prizewinners would have thrown their tickets away. Jasminder Singh, however, went to the police station in Karol Bagh to register a complaint that he had been cheated of Rs 1 lakh. The local police directed him to approach the Crime Branch as we had already investigated a case of lottery fraud.

When the case came to us, we learnt that M/s Guru Nanak Agency, Karol Bagh, run by one S.K. Sethi, was the sole selling
agent for Manipur State Lotteries. They paid Rs 18,000 as fixed royalty on each of the daily draws of Jeevan Rekha, Bhagya Rekha, Vijay Rekha and Bhagya Rekha Super—four lotteries run by them for the Manipur government. Thus, the organizers paid a fixed royalty of Rs 2,10,00,000 per annum to the Manipur government.

S.K. Sethi defrauded unsuspecting lottery ticket buyers by interchanging the results of Jeevan Rekha and Vijay Rekha lotteries in the newspapers.

To be continued.....