A First Ever – Flourishing Underground Casino Raided in Posh Indian Suburb

A carefully-guarded address where one needed only the equivalent of $1US to play.

Nightly stream of ritzy cars

Indian cops in the posh residential colony of Gurgaon swiped down on an illegal casino last Saturday night. The illicit casino, outfitted with CCTV cameras, was set up 30 days before, in a rented house in L-block of DLF city phase 2.

Forty three people were taken into custody, including five women from Nepal. The police also seized the cash counting machine found from the premises, which suggested that there must have been heavy transactions. An equivalent of $33 000 US dollars, in rupees, was also recovered.

A complaint was officially filed against the 43 arrested, as being in breach of Indian gambling laws, at the DLF City Phase-2 police station, on Sunday morning. All the detainees, which included 22 wealthy and influential men from the Gurgaon and National capital, were released on bail by the duty magistrate on Sunday.

King Club resembled modest version of a high class gambling resort

The cops descended on the site, uncovering what was described as ‘a full-fledged dice joint” which consisted of across three floors; 29 rooms and a basement.

The gaming den, known as the King Club, was owned by a Mr. Rajender Yadav and the tenant was a Mr. Naresh Malhotra. Malhotra, who trifled with shares and stock market, had been illicitly managing the 2, 980 square feet casino (correction: 5.6 square meter casino).

• Reception office on 1st floor and Casino in basement
• Five expert card-playing women hired from Nepal
• In breach of India’s IPC and Gambling Act

The hallways looked like the real gambling rigs in high staked land-based and mobile casinos, in Nepal and Goa, and was said to be designed from someone in Nepal. High rollers placed bets using chips of various denominations, ranging between 1000 and 25000 in the basement-held poker tables.

The patrons were also offered accommodation, like in a real gaming resort, and an illegal bar, selling foreign liquor, was also found in the basement. 100 bottles of IMFL were seized in the raid. Around 100 patrons came in and out of the casino on a daily basis for an entrance fee, equivalent to $1 US.

Experienced staff

Malhotra had his two partners had five women from Kathmandu, Nepal, working for them, each of whom had five years of casino work experience each. He had also hired 15 men, including bouncers, cashiers and front office men. The businessmen provided the staff with food and lodging and salaries.

When interrogated Malhotra said he hired bouncers to survey clients as well as to keep an eye out for a bust. No one was allowed to enter the house unless Malhotra granted them permission to do so.

Nightly stream of ritzy cars

Next to the bungalow style house, there was a vacant plot adjacent to the building which was allegedly used for cards and also served as a parking for expensive cars, out of which poured exclusive and rich customers, round about 10 pm, every night. Gambling went on until around 5am.

Ramesh Pal of the Indian police force said that the bust was thanks to a tip off. He further stated that “The businessman placed bets in Indian currency. Six people were hedging bets and two men were acting as token dealers”. The tokens were confiscated.

No nuisance from club

A neighbor, identifying himself as Vinod Bansal, revealed that “Earlier the building was run as guest house but recently it was renovated and the footfall increased”.

He continued, saying that “The vacant plot used to get occupied till night and lot of women also visited the building. We had no objection as no one was bothering us and we never heard loud music or had no such nuisance”.

Deepak Saharan, a government agent, said that the police team did a good job of catching people in the act of illicit gambling. Although previous gambling hideouts have already been uncovered, it was the first time that they unearthed one in such an upscale neighborhood.