Four held in Bengaluru for black-marketing IPL tickets; probe hints at deeper racket: Report

Bengaluru’s Central Crime Branch (CCB) on Friday arrested four individuals for selling IPL match tickets at exorbitant prices outside the M Chinnaswamy Stadium, reported The Times of India. The accused — S Charan Raj, H Harshavardhan Sanklecha, K Vinay, and B Venkata Sai — were caught with 32 tickets meant for the high-stakes Royal Challengers Bangalore (RCB) vs Chennai Super Kings (CSK) match.

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₹1,200 tickets sold for ₹10,000

According to the report, originally priced at ₹1,200, were being resold for as high as ₹10,000 each. Venkata Sai has been identified as the primary source of the tickets. Investigators believe he had access to bulk allocations. The operation began with the arrest of Charan Raj, and subsequent leads helped the police apprehend the remaining accused. Authorities also seized cash and mobile phones, and are now probing the source and channel through which these tickets were obtained.

“This is not just a case of street-level touting. We're examining how such large quantities of tickets landed in the hands of individuals unauthorised to distribute them,” a senior police official said.

As there was a lot of buzz around RCB vs CSK match, the black ticket sellers tried to benifit out of the craze and many sellers even reached out to people online. There are many complaints on social media as well where many sellers allegedly cheated the cricket fans in the name of tickets.

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This is not the first time such an incident has occurred this season. Just last month, CCB arrested eight people — including stadium and canteen staff — for reselling IPL tickets in black. In that operation, police recovered 18 tickets of various denominations, some originally priced at ₹1,200, ₹5,000, and ₹13,000, being illegally sold for anywhere between ₹7,000 and ₹32,000. Investigators had then hinted at possible involvement of Karnataka State Cricket Association (KSCA) members, who are likely to be summoned as part of an ongoing inquiry.