Four use fake lottery tickets to claim prizes, arrested

Kishore Anand Mohan Mandal, Arun Deori, Saidul Islam Mola and Soleman Ansari

The Borivli police have busted the inter-state gang of four who collected prize money on fake lottery tickets and have recovered around 250 fake lottery tickets from them.

All four accused - Kishore Anand Mohan Mandal, 35, Saidul Islam Mola, 28, Soleman Ansari, 22, and Arun Deori, 28 - are residents of West Bengal. They would come to Mumbai and take away the prize of the winner by showing a fake lottery ticket, from a lottery centre in Borivli.

The police told the court that the first accused arrested in this case, Mandal, went to the Siddhi lottery shop, showed him a bunch of Nagaland state lottery tickets and claimed that he was the winner of the lottery. When the shopkeeper checked the ticket, he found a reward amount of R2,25,000 on it. He paid R85,000 to Mandal and asked him to collect the remaining amount the next day.

When the shopkeeper contacted the lottery company for the amount, he was told that the winner had already collected the money.

On Thursday, when Mandal visited the lottery shop, the shopkeeper took him to Goregaon lottery distributor Mahesh Gavda, 42. On checking the tickets, they found that they were fake. The shopkeeper took Mandal to Borivli police station and lodged an FIR. Police arrested the rest of the gang members after interrogating Mandal.

A police officer told mid-day that around 250 fake lottery tickets were recovered from the accused. Apart from this, one laptop and four mobile phones have been seized from them.

"Preliminary investigation has revealed that the arrested accused had cheated lottery shopkeepers in Goregaon and Kalbadevi area," the officer added. Senior inspector Ninand Sawant told mid-day, "The accused are remanded in police custody till March 7."