"A Matter of Chance" continues....

Generally, members of the public go by the results published in the newspapers. By interchanging the results of the two lotteries, Sethi made a wrongful gain of Rs 2.5 crore in one single draw.
Readers can extrapolate the amount of money Sethi would have made by adopting this modus operandi when the draw of lots took place every day. Not even in one case did Sethi issue a corrigendum. After registering a case based on the complaint made by Jasminder Singh and conducting a detailed investigation, we arrested S.K. Sethi on 11 November 1992 and charge-sheeted him for cheating and criminal breach of trust.
Yet another complainant, Jagdish Lal of Faridabad, bought Hast Rekha lottery ticket number 3851501, which was declared the first prize winner in the draw of lots in June 1993. The prize amount was Rs 1 lakh. Much like Pritam Kumar Razak of Jamalpur, he sent his claim through a nationalized bank, but the organizing agent did not pay him a single penny on the grounds that the ticket in question was never printed. When Jagdish Lal persisted with his questioning of the organizing agent, he was threatened with criminal action for forgery.

S.K. Sethi was once again the organizing agent. We recovered Jagdish Lal’s prize-winning ticket from Sethi’s office. Additional charges were pressed against Sethi, who had already been arrested by the Crime Branch in the earlier case.

Complaints of lottery frauds committed by resorting to a wide variety of modus operandi continued to pour in. Ved Prakash Saxena of Bareilly complained that he was denied payment of the first prize of the Bharat Raffle Deluxe Lottery on his winning ticket number 321138, which amounted to Rs 2 lakh. M/s Guru Nanak Lotteries of Karol Bagh had organized the draw in May 1993. Here again, the organizing agent questioned the genuineness of the ticket Saxena produced and shooed away the claimant by threatening him with criminal action for forgery.


To be continued.....