Trio caught selling free passes, tickets for Sachin's last Test

Three men associated with different city clubs have allegedly been black-marketing tickets (in pic) and passes for the India-West Indies Test in the city, which will mark the end of Indian cricketing legend Sachin Tendulkar's international career. The three men were caught selling complimentary tickets, and tickets at exorbitant rates.

The police have revealed that the accused, who have since been arrested, had received the tickets free of cost from the Mumbai Cricket Association (MCA), which they were black-marketing.

Police Inspector Nandkumar Gopale, Assistant Police Inspectors Nitin Patil and Laxmikant Salunke from the Property cell of the Mumbai Crime Branch had received a tip-off about tickets being black-marketed for the landmark Test match. "We worked on the information and found out the details about the suspects. Next, we posed as decoy customers and asked them to meet us to strike a deal for tickets for the match," said Niket Kaushik, additional commissioner of police, CrimeBranch.

Money trap
One of the accused, identified as Janak Gandhi, is a member of Garware Club in Churchgate, and was selling complimentary passes for the Garware Pavilion to desperate fans for Rs 25,000 each. "We contacted him, asking for a few tickets, and said that we were ready to pay money. He asked us to meet him near the MCA office. We nabbed him when he came to the spot," said SPI Gopale.

The police also nabbed two others, who have been identified as Girish Premna and Ajay Jadhav. During interrogations, the cops learnt that Bhayander resident Premna works at Bombay Gymkhana while Jadhav is an employee of Islam Gymkhana. "We found six complimentary passes with Gandhi, eight passes for the V Merchant Pavilion with Premna. Jadhav had six tickets for the V Merchant Pavilion," said API Patil.

Gandhi is a builder from Girgaum area. The trio was selling tickets for the Garware Pavilion for Rs 25,000 each. The tickets were marked ‘complimentary'. V Merchant tickets, which cost Rs 1,000 each, were being sold for Rs 8,000.

"We have registered a cheating case in Marine Drive police station against the three accused and we suspect more people are involved in the racket, most of whom are club members. We will question them and arrest them soon," said Joint Commissioner of Police, Crime, Himashu Roy.

A majority of the tickets and passes for the Test match were given complimentary to clubs, as only 4,000 were sold to the general public.