Cricket bookie Dinesh Kalgi passes away

According to sources, Kalgi breathed his last on Saturday afternoon.

Kalgi is believed to have run the biggest cricket betting racket in Gujarat over two decades. Along with his partner Mahendra Mukhi, Kalgi ran the Sudama Resort in Paldi area, the biggest hub of betting and used to be frequented by gangsters.

In 2012 when former DCP V Chandrashekhar, who is now with the CBI, raided the resort Mukhi surrendered and later Kalgi also gave himself up.

During this raid, the police had succeeded in breaking into the gambling den running inside the resort which was a small apartment like structure. The investigation into this case had not only exposed his modus operandi but also why he was evading from the police net. Kalgi’s den Sudama resort was also a rendezvous for gangsters like Yusuf Laplap, Mehboob Baig alias Senior, who were accomplices of the slain Abdul Latif and builders like Munaf and Rashid Bata, Ahmed Mandali and Adam Mandali who were frequent visitors to this den.

Kalgi was one of the biggies in the circuit of bookies and was suspected to have connection with the bookies in Pakistan. His name had cropped up in the Indian Premier League (IPL) betting case after the arrest of some bookies from Gujarat in 2013.

Gujarat bookies Manan Bhatt, Amit Singh and others who had allegedly aided Indian cricketers S Sreesanth, Ajit Chandeliya and Ankit Chavan were found to be in touch with Kalgi and Mukhi. The bookie Vinod Mulchandani held by the Crime Branch for betting in the IPL  is also a close aide of Kalgi.

An officer from the Ahmedabad crime branch said, “The Dawood Ibrahim henchmen late Abdul Latif and Abdul Wahab aides have been keeping their activities alive by supplying logistics  to the gamblers. The bookies arrested in last several operations from Ahmedabad were found to be using Karachi and Dubai links to expand their activities”.

The crime branch had also recovered call data records of calls made to Pakistan which revealed that Kalgi was found to have been in touch with Pakistan bookies. Although he had been booked for gambling and betting for several years the police had never found concrete evidence against him.