MUKESH KUMAR
PRUDENT NETWORK
A staggering judicial review of nearly 5,800 matka gambling cases across Goa over the last decade has revealed a glaring, systemic failure by the State police – virtually every single contested case has ended in acquittal due to a repeated, identical legal loophole.
An analysis of judgments delivered by Judicial Magistrate First Class (JMFC) courts across both North and South Goa since 2016 shows a clean sweep of acquittals for arrested bookies. Courts uniformly ruled that the offense of illegal matka betting cannot be established under the Goa, Daman and Diu Public Gambling Act in the absolute absence of a co-accused person placing the bet.Yet, despite thousands of cases collapsing on this exact legal ground year after year, local police stations and the Crime Branch have continued to arrest only the bookies, leaving courts overburdened with doomed prosecutions.
SITs fails to dismantle network
The persistence of this identical flaw has sparked sharp accusations of corruption. Activist Kashinath Shetye, who originally filed a landmark Public Interest Litigation (PIL) in the High Court in 2015 alleging a nexus between police, politicians, and matka syndicates, claims the strategy is deliberate.
"The police register cases merely to pressure matka bookies, with the ultimate aim of collecting hafta (extortion payments)," Shetye alleges. "They intentionally leave this loophole open so that the bookies are eventually acquitted."Following Shetye's 2015 PIL, a Special Investigation Team (SIT) was formed under the Crime Branch to root out the syndicate. However, after a decade of investigation, the SIT has produced no concrete convictions and failed to dismantle any major network.
Crime Branch seeks to disband SIT
With a decade yielding virtually nothing, the Crime Branch has now moved the High Court to formally disband the SIT.
In its application, the Crime Branch noted that investigators interrogated hundreds of suspects and probed interstate leads, but found no evidence to link the trade to an organized political-police syndicate. They also reported that primary matka result websites operate via foreign web hosts, and noted that while a case was previously booked against former Deputy Chief Minister Babu Kavlekar after slips were seized from an outhouse, conspiracy and corruption charges were ultimately dropped due to insufficient evidence.
Between October 2015 and April 2025, authorities registered 6,508 matka cases, arrested 6,788 individuals, and seized over Rs 18 lakh in cash. While the Crime Branch has assured the High Court that enforcement will continue, it omitted a crucial detail from its report: the near-total collapse of those cases in court.
Dismissing the State's crackdown as an "eyewash," Shetye has demanded that the entire menace of Goa's underground matka gambling be handed over to the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), under the direct monitoring of a retired High Court judge.
As the illegal betting dens continue to operate openly across villages, municipalities, and cities, critical questions remain unanswered: Why have senior Goa police officials never questioned investigating officers over a decade of identical legal blunders, and why is a loophole this obvious never rectified?
A tale of two districts with 5,790 cases
The numbers paint a damning picture of institutional inertia across the State's police apparatus.
* North Goa (2,710 acquittals): From Valpoi (160 cases) and Ponda (380 cases) to Mapusa (860 cases) and Panaji (over 800 cases), every single Matka case handled by local police and the Crime Branch resulted in the acquittal of the accused bookie. * South Goa (3,080 acquittals): The pattern repeated seamlessly down south. Courts in Canacona (390), Vasco (410), Sanguem (380), Quepem (500), and Margao (1,400) recorded a 100% acquittal rate across all cases chargesheeted by local stations and the Crime Branch. Out of the total cases registered under the Gambling Act since October 2015, the only rare exceptions of "conviction" were three instances in 2026 (two in Ponda JMFC Court, one in Quepem JMFC Court) where the accused voluntarily chose to plead guilty and pay a minor fine of Rs 3,000. Not a single case was won on its merits by the prosecution.
