Nepal: At a time of fast-changing nature of crimes with the advent of new technologies, some unscrupulous elements have found yet another modus operandi for gambling.
photo: google image
According to police, a group of people is involved in gambling with the help of
Chinese app TikTok (owned by tech giant ByteDance) and they run gambling dens
live on the app.
Police
officials say although they have arrested some people involved in such illegal
activities, they are finding it difficult to trace the gamblers as most of them
use fake IDs and phone numbers. As access to new phone numbers has become
easier, such users keep changing their numbers or dump certain numbers after
using them for illegal activities, police said. Lack of clear laws to tackle
cyber crimes is yet another challenge.
Between January 10 and January 17, the Kathmandu Valley Crime Investigation
Office, Minbhawan nabbed four people from different places who were involved in
organising gambling via TikTok live. Police said they were doing transactions
of over Rs5 million using digital wallets.
Three
of the gamblers were arrested on January 10 and one more on January 17.
Rishi
Prakash Yogi, 21, who ran playing cards games on TikTok with the nickname Pugg
and Pubg2, was arrested from Gwarko in Lalitpur. Police records show that Yogi
made transactions of Rs2.8 million through e-Sewa mobile wallet over the past
10 days, playing the game live with different people.
Another
gambler, Kapil Giri, 27, was nabbed from Suryabinayak Municipality-10 in
Bhaktapur. He organised online gambling on TikTok under the alias Pler King.
Police records show that Giri collected Rs1 million from three different e-Sewa
accounts within 10 days.
Meanwhile, on Tuesday, police apprehended Harischandra Malla,
35, from Harisiddhi, Lalitpur. Malla, who operated under the alias Kick Cash,
had transactions worth Rs853,331 over the past 15 days via two different e-Sewa
accounts.
That
same day, police apprehended Prem Kathyat, 21, another online gambling
organiser on TikTok, from Madhyapur Thimi-1 in Bhaktapur. He conducted
transactions worth Rs93,214 through e-Sewa within six days.
The gamblers were arrested with cell phones, a diary used to keep record of
players and transactions, and books of cards.
According to the Valley Police Investigation Office, the
gamblers have been sent for further investigation under Section 125 of the National Penal (Code) Act, 2017, which
prohibits gambling and betting in
“These
are among the first cases of police nabbing gamblers on TikTok, but there is no
proper cyber law to punish them,” said Superintendent of Police Krishna Prasad
Koirala, who is also the spokesperson for Kathmandu Valley Crime Investigation
Office.
According to police, after it released the names of the gamblers, they have
received a flood of phone calls on their emergency toll free number (100),
complaining about more such incidents of gamblers going live.
“It
seems that the gamblers have found TikTok live the best option, as many people
use the app in
To
go live on TikTok, the user must have 1,000 followers.
Koirala
said that police used its own surveillance techniques to nab those gamblers.
“But there are many people operating gambling networks with fake identities and
numbers and without proper identity,” he said. “We can’t close the concerned
TikTok accounts as we do not have direct access to TikTok administrators.”
TikTok
is a video-sharing social media platform where one can create, edit, share,
discover and watch short videos. After finding it challenging to monitor
activities on TikTok, some countries have even banned the app, for
instance
Experts say that the number of TikTok users has soared in
Though
many find it a useful distraction, a few are misusing it.
“I
started using TikTok after the Covid-19 pandemic. I pass time on the platform
after I do my studies. These days, I have also noticed that some people go live
and gamble there,” said Sailesh Bastola, 21, a student at Thapathali
Engineering Campus who is a regular Tik-Tok user. “If police do not control it,
this may have serious consequences. The regular gamblers who would run the
racket from their apartments now got a digital platform to do so.”
In
According
to a story published in the media platform
Rest of World, a 2022 nationwide survey showed a dramatic rise in the number of
TikTok users in
According
to Start.io, a mobile data platform, there are
2.2 million active TikTok users in
“With
access to the internet, people can participate in illegal activities, including
gambling,” said Santosh Sigdel, an internet freedom advocate and president of
Digital Rights Nepal.
He
said the law regulating the offence of gambling has not covered ‘online
gambling’ in the penal code.
“Just like the so-called online gambling, many
cyber offences are not explicitly regulated in
Anup Ojha write by kathmandupost
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