A few days before the start of the second season of the Nepal Premier League (NPL), a player of Janakpur Bolts received a message on the social media platform Instagram from an ID named ‘Ruby Thakur’ asking for his phone number. ‘Number or can we meet when you are free? Let’s discuss something that will benefit both of us,’ the message said.

The player replied, wondering what kind of sponsor he was. After they offered to meet and talk, the player called the Dusit Princess Hotel in Lazimpat where he was staying.

The ones who reached the hotel were Rebecca Singh Thakuri and Indian citizen Dilpreet Singh. As soon as they met the player, they offered him between Rs 10 million and Rs 50 million. ‘Their condition was that he should be run out in a symbolic way in an over, they were also teaching him how to be run out,’ the player says, ‘Singh had even said that he was a player who had played cricket in India.’

The player, who was aware of the investigation into spot-fixing in the Nepal T-20 League, came to the hotel where he was staying and was shocked by the offer made by the Indian. Some time later, he informed the police personnel accompanying him about the offer of fixing.

The Cricket Association of Nepal (CAN) has been adopting a strict policy to prevent any kind of fixing. In such a situation, security personnel in plain clothes were deployed with each player in coordination with the police. ‘Perhaps the decision to deploy police also worked, as soon as the information came, the Valley Crime Investigation Office team arrested two people,’ says an official of CAN, ‘Later it turned out that they had also proposed to four other players.’ 

SP Kazi Kumar Acharya of the Crime Investigation Office said that the police started investigating after arresting them on 2 Kartik. ‘Our team was deployed before the start of the game to prevent illegal activities in the NPL,’ he said, ‘A team of 20 people under the command of a police inspector was deployed on the field in plain clothes throughout the game.’

A team deployed in the same way had arrested eight Indian citizens on suspicion of engaging in suspicious activities at the Tribhuvan University sports ground. “The team deployed at the stadium increased surveillance after seeing them paying more attention to their mobile phones than the game,” Acharya said. “Later, it was found that they were all sitting there and involved in betting.” 

Police arrested Raja Yadula, 31, Mahesh Babu, 35, Pandit Srinivasulu, 30, Sheikh Shoyab, 20, Naveen Madela, 30, Mohammed Rafi Sheikh, 32, Soi Kumar Tammisetti, 19, and Sheikhchand Basal, 28, all from Andhra Pradesh, India, from the stadium. During the investigation of the 15 mobile phones recovered from them, it was found that they were placing bets through a betting site called Betacular.live. 

“There is a delay of a few seconds when the live broadcast of the matches being played in Nepal is broadcast on television or online,” Acharya said. “They used to place bets before the live information of each ball was available by playing in that gap.” It was found that they had come to Kathmandu from India a few days ago for this purpose. They were also found living in the same place in Samakhusi. 

The District Police Complex, Kathmandu, had also made a separate security plan for the security of the NPL. According to SP Pawan Bhattarai of Kathmandu Police, 1,223 security personnel were deployed from the subordinate police circle, Kirtipur, at the playground alone.

2 to 400 police were deployed to protect the residences and movement of the players. A team of Kathmandu Police worked to ensure that there were no casualties, sloganeering and fights when a large number of spectators gathered for the NPL, while another team monitored betting, fixing, etc. 

The Kathmandu Police team also arrested Indian citizen Dharmanath Prasad, 55, and Nepali citizen Ramanand Yadav, 25, on charges of being involved in online betting. They used to arrange betting from room number 101 of The Mount Fuji Hotel in Sundhara, Kathmandu-11. According to the police, the investigation has shown that they have been betting more than 20 million Nepali rupees through websites such as Samratbet.com, Skynplay.com, Star Games.com, Allpan247, Onexbet, Onexcricket, NPL247.

The police say that they have also been using the bank accounts of different people without authorization to conduct illegal transactions. During the investigation, it was found that Indian citizen Dharmanath had connected Yadav to the online betting business by promising him a monthly salary of 40 thousand rupees. The police took some of them into custody for misbehaving, while some who entered the ground with fake tickets were also arrested. 

According to Kathmandu police officials, the situation could have gone out of control if the situation had escalated at this event, which was attended by a large number of people for the first time since the Gen-G movement.

Keeping that issue in mind, Home Minister Om Prakash Aryal had also called Kathmandu Chief District Officer Ishwor Raj Poudel, Kathmandu SSP Ramesh Thapa and other security officials before the start of the game to discuss preventing any untoward incident. At that time, Minister Aryal had said that security arrangements should be strengthened even as cricket was being played at night for the first time.