Lanka arrests Briton for T20 ticket theft

A British man was arrested in Colombo Sunday on a charge of stealing 100 tickets for the World Twenty20 match between hosts Sri Lanka and defending champions England, police said.

The 54-year-old man identified as Caesar Antonio Buller from Manchester was taken into custody at a ticket booth in the capital after sales staff alerted the police, an official said.

"He had gone up in the queue for tickets and somehow pocketed the ticket books that were on a counter," police spokesman Ajith Rohana told AFP. "We found four ticket books in his possession."

He said each book had 25 tickets for Monday's game. Some were priced at 250 rupees and the others were 750 rupees ($5.7) each.

Rohana said the British national had also in his possession three other tickets which he may have purchased at the same ticket sales unit.

"We will take him before a magistrate tomorrow and take further legal action," Rohana said.

It was the first case of ticket theft for the Twenty20 tournament which opened on September 18 and goes on till October 7.

Last month, police raided a factory turning out counterfeit International Cricket Council (ICC) World Twenty20 T-shirts and seized stocks of spurious merchandise.

The crackdown on fake World Twenty20 merchandise followed a complaint from the ICC over trademark infringements.
 

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