Kolkata police till Sunday seized 118 tickets of the India-South Africa match at the Eden Gardens that were being illegally sold at a premium.
The seizures started on November 1.
These tickets will now rest at the Lalbazar malkhana as exhibits in cases of black marketeering.
At a time when thousands of Kolkatans lamented that they did not get a chance to buy a ticket for Sunday’s match, 118 genuine tickets were literally “wasted” as they could neither be utilised nor returned to any of the vendors for resale.
“They are crucial pieces of evidence in the seven cases that have been started related to cheating and black marketeering of the Sunday match tickets,” said an IPS officer posted in Lalbazar.
According to the protocol, as the cases were started by the anti-rowdy squad of the detective department, all the seized tickets were stored in sealed packets and kept in the Lalbazar malkhana as exhibits in the cases.
The tickets were seized from black marketeers in Kolkata who were allegedly selling those for much higher prices, said the police.
“These will be opened only during the evidence presentation of the case trial,” said the officer.
A criminal case has to undergo multiple stages to reach the penultimate stage of trial.
“Once the police start their investigation, the next step is the collection of evidence in the form of seizures and recording witness statements. If need be, forensic examinations are also carried out. After completion of the investigation, police submit their chargesheet which is weighed by the court during the charge framing process. Once the charges are finalised by the court, the trial is started. It is during the trial that the evidence collected during the investigation is physically submitted before the court. Till then, all the evidence is stored in custody of the police,” explained a senior police officer.
Several years often pass in between till a case reaches its trial phase.
Police said by the time the 118 match tickets that are now in the custody of the Kolkata police would see daylight again, Eden would have hosted many more cricket matches.
Many cricket enthusiasts The Telegraph spoke to, who could not buy the tickets online and ended up falling into the trap of fraudsters on Facebook lamented that they missed the match.
“It is sad that I spent Rs 94,000 for the tickets but did not get hold of any,” said Soumyajyoti Banerjee, one of the complainants who had been cheated of his money through Facebook.
Suman Sarkar, who was also cheated similarly and came to Kolkata from Arunachal Pradesh only for the match, said he too was watching the match on television on Sunday.