A 25-year-old youth committed suicide on Sunday allegedly after losing bets over IPl cricket matches on Saturday.

He made frantic calls to friends over their cellphones late on Saturday night as to which team in the ongoing IPl matches was making good scores but later found hanging from a tree at Garurbasa under Birsanagar police station area.

The deceased was identified as Sandeep Ram, who used to work as a cook at a fast food stall  at Plaza Market in Telco. The body was found hanging from a branch of  a tree about one kilometres away from his house at Garurbasa Uppertola at about 5 am on Sunday.

 Police suspect the youth might have taken the drastic step for ending his life after losing IPl betting over the cricket matches on Saturday.

OC, Birsanagar, Upendra Narayan Singh said  they strongly suspected the reason behind Sandeep's suicide was IPl betting because he had made several calls to his friends between 10 pm to 11 pm about the score made by - Chennai Super Kings and Mumbai Indians, the two teams which had played the IPl match  on Saturday night. “We had gathered the numbers of last calls made from the cellphone from the deceased's cellphone.  In all the five calls made, the recepients of the calls told us that Sandeep was desperately asking about the scores of the Saturday IPl match,” quipped the OC.

Gorai, when asked, said he did not know how much amount Sandeep lost in the IPl betting, but it is for certain that he had participated in the betting as he was looking very upset when he came out of the house last midnight.

Assistant sub-inspector, Ajay Shankar Singh of Birsanagar thana made an Inquest on the body of the deceased and sent it to the MGM Medical College mortuary for post-mortem.

On the playground the Indian Premiere league (IPl) may have given chances to select players to churn easy money but off the field the league has given rise to one of the biggest betting rackets in the city too luring the youths to mint easy money.

The betting trade for new season of IPl is soaring high in the city with students of several English medium schools falling prey to the racket. Even college students have started betting.

According to the people involved in the racket, they are making quick money in spot betting during the match. In IPl, bets are placed on wins, losses, runs per ball, final scores of teams or batsmen, how a batsman will get out, number of overs that each team will bowl and man of the match.