4 held for selling fake tickets for India-Pak World Cup match

Ahmedabad: The Detection of Crime Branch (DCB) of Ahmedabad city police have arrested four youths for allegedly printing and selling fake tickets for the upcoming India-Pakistan cricket World Cup match.

An official on Wednesday said that three of the four accused are 18 years old, while the fourth one is aged 21.

The India vs Pakistan World Cup 2023 match is scheduled to be held at the Narendra Modi Stadium located in Motera area of Gujarat’s Ahmedabad on October 14.

According to the police’s preliminary probe, the accused first purchased an original ticket of the match and then printed nearly 200 duplicate tickets after editing the scanned copy of that original ticket using Photoshop software at the shop of one of the accused.

“The police have recovered all 200 tickets, including the 50 that were sold by the youths using their connections on social media,” Deputy Commissioner of Police Chaitanya Mandlik of the Ahmedabad city crime branch said.

The accused, identified as Jaymin Prajapati, Dhrumil Thakor, Rajvir Thakor, and Kush Meena, are residents of different parts of either Ahmedabad or Gandhinagar, he added.

They were booked under various provisions of the Indian Penal Code for charges like criminal conspiracy, criminal breach of trust, cheating, and forgery.

Giving details of the case, Mandlik said, “After learning that tickets for the Indo-Pak match are in huge demand and can be sold at a high price to cricket fans, Prajapati, who lives near the stadium, came up with the idea of selling duplicate tickets in the black market.”

“He then roped in Rajvir and Dhrumil to execute his plan and approached Meena, who owns a print shop in Bodakdev area. When Meena said an original ticket was needed to execute the plan, Dhrumil purchased one ticket and gave it to Meena, who then created fake digital copies from the scanned file of the original ticket on his computer using Photoshop,” the official said.

The accused then purchased a colour printer and printed nearly 200 duplicate tickets, which looked exactly like the original one. Using their connections on social media, Prajapati and Rajvir initially sold some tickets. When the demand for it started going up, they printed some more tickets and sold them to cricket fans for a price ranging from Rs 2,000 to Rs 20,000 per ticket, Mandlik said.

“After learning about this illegal activity, our team raided Meena’s shop on Tuesday and nabbed all four accused with unsold tickets and other material, including defective print-outs of tickets, printer, computer, and mobile phones. We also recovered 50 tickets that were sold by the accused for Rs 3 lakh collectively to the cricket fans,” he said.

With inputs from PTI