You may have seen a boom of betting and betting-adjacent advertisements on TV right nowadays. Reputed bookmakers like Betway, Dafabet, and Parimatch have been advertising during prime time sports in India and that is something that would have caught the attention of a number of people. Is online betting legal in India? This is a gray area and there seems to be a current loophole in that law that allows Indians to bet online without getting in trouble.
Let us tell you a bit more about it.
Is online betting legal in India?
The law against betting in India is primarily the Public Gambling Act of 1867 that was brought in by the British. That law is still in force after close to 150 years and has not been changed at all. This is why the punishment for getting caught betting is Rs. 100 and the penalty for running a gambling operation inside India is Rs. 200.
That law does not make any mention about online betting at all. It is easy to understand why since there was no such thing as the internet during those days! This absence of the words online betting or online casinos has meant that online betting is not technically illegal in India.
Is online betting legal in India? That is a question that legal experts can weigh in on but as someone who is very familiar with the world of betting. The fact that Indian governments have not amended this law to include the online industry indicates that online betting is indeed legal and the government is not trying to clamp down on it.
No one has ever been prosecuted in India for betting online and there is actually no way to enforce such a ban as well. The future is the legalization and regularisation of sports betting (and eventually all gambling) in this country.
