Legal Bettings in India

The first and foremost question of all the punters who are interested in betting is "Wether betting in India is legal?", the answer is obvious is a "No". Then the next question will be "Is is possible for Indians to bet on cricket matches like IPL, CLT and other national and international matches?" The Answer is: Yes, and its 100% possible for an Indian to bet on those matches.

Betting or gambling is illegal in most of India. But there is no law that makes online betting an illegal activity. Offshore betting companies are apparently using this ‘loophole’ to lure Indians to bet on pretty much everything. The Indian Premier League (IPL) tops their lists now and somewebsites have even hooked up with offshore betting agencies, thereby allowing Indians to place online bets.

In short we can say "betting is Legally Illegal but you can bet online in India".

Public Gambling Act, 1867 prohibits the activity of gambling.

This central legislation defines gaming houses and declares gambling illegal where it is being done as a business to earn profits.  Section 3 of the Act pertains to Casinos/gaming house and states that-

“any house, walled enclosure, room or place in which cards, dice, tables or other instruments of gaming are kept or used for the profit or gain of the person owning, occupying, using or keeping such house, enclosure, room or place, whether by way of charge for the use of the instruments of gaming or of the house, enclosure, room or place, or otherwise.“

In short:

Occupying, owning or using the land on which gambling takes place is a crime.

Even visiting a place where gambling takes place is a crime. You need not be an active participant to be charged with the crime.

The police have full authority to search, enter, arrest all the occupants and seize all the gambling instruments.

Section 12 of the Act provides the criteria for declaring any game as illegal i.e whether it is based on chance or skill

The recently passed IT act which would set IP bans on gaming sites is the closest problem punters from India face.

Two other laws are in place that making betting at sports websites part of a grey area. They are as follows;

1. The Foreign Exchange Policy – In India it is not allowed to use currency other than Indian Rupees (INR) to deposit and withdraw. This is a fact, but some betting sites allow the use of funding and cashing out in Rupees therefore nullifying this law. Not only that but the advent of Moneybookers, Neteller and Paypal allow someone in India to fund one of these ewallets in Rupees, play at the casino, withdraw back to their ewallet and then to their bank via Rupees. Again that nixes this law.

2. The Act of 1867 – Yup, that’s right. Somehow someone got it in their mind that a law enacted more than 100 years before the internet was invented can try and presume the law applies to internet sports wagering. The out-dated law clearly is not sufficient to ban online betting, but it has since put a gray cloud over online gambling in general.

After doing a huge research i have launched this website LegalBetting.in, you will find almost all the answers of your questions related to legality of betting in India. As we have mentioned above that betting is Legally Illegal but you can bet online in India using offshore bookmakers like bet365.com, Dafabet.com and 888sport.com. We highly recommend not to use your Indian bank account directly to any betting websites as you will get cought very easly as your bank statement will show all the informations about the transactions, therefore it is better to use any E-Wallet such as Neteller.com or skrill to avoide such problems.