On Saturday, June 10th, police in Punjab launched a special action to deal with illegal lottery operations and other gambling practices across the state.
In a major crackdown, more than 500 premises were raided based on 40 First Information Reports (FIR), leading to results that some might call impressive.
Who Carried the Operation?
The operation was carried out based on directions of Punjab director general of police (DGP) Gaurav Yadav, while the special DGP Arpit Shukla noted that the synchronised action lasted for many hours, from 10 AM to 3 PM across the entire state.
During the operations, all the commissioners of police, as well as senior superintendents of police, were instructed to depute station house officers (SHOS)/additional SHOs to the action, asking each police station to contribute to the raid and also perform checks on people that have more than two cases of breaking the Gambling Act in the last five years.
Overall, 285 police teams and more than 1,500 police officers and personnel were part of the action, which ended with more than 500 different premises being raided in 28 police districts in Punjab state.
During the raids more than 110 people involved in illicit lottery operations and more than 400 people involved in darra-satta were checked, while Punjab Police also seized ₹46,610.
Is Gambling Illegal in India?
According to the Public Gambling Act of 1867, gambling of any kind is illegal in India. However, this law does leave the states with a chance to decide on their own whether they want to legalise gambling, as some states have done.
Meanwhile, online gambling is not illegal in India since the law doesn’t mention anything about it, given that it was written in the 19th century. That is why online casinos based abroad can operate without any issues in many states, except those states that have explicitly forbidden online gambling.
This is not the case with many states, but we are seeing some of them trying to change the laws and deal with online gambling, like Tamil Nadu and its recent law that prohibits online gambling.
