The house off Amherst Street which was the illegal gambling den. Picture by Aranya Sen

Five men were arrested on a charge of running a gambling den at 4C Ramananda Chatterjee Street, in the Amherst Street police station area, on Wednesday night.

The police acted on a complaint filed by a retired accountant of West Bengal Agro Industries Corporation, who lost Rs 2.7 lakh in an overnight gambling spree on April 10.

Sambhu Mukherjee, 52, netted by the cops, ran the ‘regal’ gambling den with four associates — Amit Banerjee, alias Shankar Mukherjee, Sujit Pal of Birati, Nitai Halder of Madhyamgram and Kartik Roy of Sonarpur.

Sambhu and his associates lured their victims by claiming that the old building in which they ran their gambling den was an address where the dice had rolled for the past 100 years, for descendants of zamindars and surviving members of a “royal aristocracy”.

“One of their tricks was not to use the common playing cards. Instead, they secured an ancient board and a dice, as heard of in the tales of zamindars,” said Gyanwant Singh, deputy commissioner of police (detective department).

After making their victim win the first few rounds, the gang coerced him into playing bigger stakes.

“ A sex worker masquerading as a queen or the wife of a zamindar was also a member of this gang. We’re trying to track her down,” said an officer of Amherst Street police station.

Police said Sambhu’s father Montu Mukherjee had also been in the business of duping people and had been arrested several times for con jobs when he was alive.