RCB ticket fraud arrest

Bengaluru police arrested a stadium catering worker accused of reselling Royal Challengers Bengaluru tickets at inflated prices outside M Chinnaswamy Stadium. (indianexpress.com) The Central Crime Branch said Chandrashekar P, 49, was held after the April 15 Royal Challengers Bengaluru vs Lucknow Super Giants match. Officers said he had more than 100 tickets and was allegedly selling seats sourced through corporate bookings. (indianexpress.com) Local reports said tickets for that match were being flipped for ₹15,000 to ₹19,000. Prabhat Khabar reported that the accused sold more than 180 tickets in the wider racket. (prabhatkhabar.com, indianexpress.com) Police said the tickets appear to have come from bulk allocations made under private firms. Investigators identified a second accused, Ganesh Harikesh, as an alleged operator in the supply chain, and said he remains absconding. (indianexpress.com) The arrest landed in the middle of a season when Bengaluru home games have been hard to get. Police said on April 4 that official tickets for upcoming RCB matches in the city were already sold out, and warned that all other sale links were fake. (hindustantimes.com) That warning covered a cluster of high-demand fixtures at M Chinnaswamy Stadium on April 5, April 15, April 18, and April 24. The official Indian Premier League schedule lists Royal Challengers Bengaluru home matches in Bengaluru through the month. (hindustantimes.com, iplt20.com) This was not the first ticket case around RCB this month. Bengaluru police said 11 people were arrested after the April 5 RCB vs Chennai Super Kings match, with 28 tickets, eight mobile phones, and WhatsApp sale screenshots seized in seven cases. (hindustantimes.com) Police are also chasing a separate online fraud trail. In that case, officers said a fake website copied the official RCB ticketing platform, three complainants reported losses of ₹7,196, ₹11,991, and ₹7,497, and investigators suspect transactions worth crores of rupees may have passed through linked accounts. (hindustantimes.com) Investigators said mobile ticketing has reduced some street-level resale, but not the diversion of large blocks booked under company names. A senior police officer told The Indian Express that controlling how tickets are allocated involves multiple stakeholders, including the Karnataka State Cricket Association, the franchise, corporate quotas, and online platforms. (indianexpress.com) For fans, the practical split is now clear: one market is fake links that take money and vanish, and the other is real tickets resold at illegal markups near sold-out games. Bengaluru police said both investigations are still open. (hindustantimes.com, indianexpress.com)