Hindustan Times (Lucknow)

Delhi Police arrests former MP DP Yadav

- Karn Pratap Singh

Former MP D P Yadav was on Wednesday arrested by Delhi Police in a case of MCOCA registered last year in connection with a betting racket busted in north east Delhi’s Bhajanpura area. Yadav, who was in an Uttarakhan­d jail, was arrested by the local police on a production warrant issued by a city court, said a senior police officer. Yadav, also a former UP government minister was brought here by Uttarakhan­d police team and his custody was handed over to north east Delhi Police, said the officer.

Uttar Pradesh politician DP Yadav, who is already serving a life term in a prison in Dehradun for a murder, was arrested on Wednesday by Delhi Police in connection with an organised “online betting” racket.

A case under the Maharashtr­a Control of Organised Crime Act(MCOCA ) was registered last year at the Bhajanpura police station. More than a dozen people were arrested after a raid was conducted on August 26-27 last year at a building in Bhajanpura from where the betting racket was being run.

The former UP minister has been arrested on alleged charges of accepting protection money from members of the gang that cheated people by luring them to invest in ‘betting’, police said.

The gang convinced investors that the betting was a government­approved lottery system. The arrested included Roshan Lal Verma and Amarnath Bajaj, mastermind­s of the syndicate. Verma and Bajaj said they were closely associated with gangster-turned politician Yadav, and it was he who allegedly had led them into the illegal betting business.

The two said they used to send `2 lakh per day as protection money to Yadav and his family members.

Ajit Kumar Singla, deputy commission­er of police (northeast), said Yadav is in a jail in Dehradun in a murder case and they secured his custody on a production warrant. “We produced Yadav before a city court that sent him to 10 days police custody,” said Singla.

Singla said they will interrogat­e Yadav to probe his role and associatio­n with the betting racketeers arrested in the past.

“Yadav is accused of receiving `2 lakh per day as protection money since 2005. We want to grill him to know what he did with the money,” Singla added.

Yadav’s son Vikas and another family member Vishal are also in prison, serving a 30-year jail term for the sensationa­l murder of businessma­n Nitish Katara in 2002.

In March 2015, Yadav was sentenced to life behind bars by special CBI court for the murder of an MLA 23 years ago. Yadav was sent to the Dehradun jail.

While probing the background of Verma and Bajaj, investigat­ors learnt that the two were running the illegal trade in an organised manner for over a decade and were assisted by over 100 agents active in states such as Delhi, Punjab, Himachal Pradesh, Haryana, Chandigarh, Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh.

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DP Yadav

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