New Delhi: In fresh trouble for those allegedly involved in the IPL spot-fixing scandal, a Delhi court on Monday said some of the arrested accused persons have a “nexus” with the organised crime syndicate, which brings the case under the fold of stringent Maharashtra Control of Organised Crimes Act.
“In the present case, in the light of incriminating evidence that some of the accused persons named above were having direct link or nexus with organised crime syndicate, facilitating and running betting racket, that would bring the case within the fold of section 2 (1) (e) read with section 3 of MCOCA,” Additional Sessions Judge Dharmesh Sharma said.
The observations came while granting bail to suspended cricketer Ajit Chandila and two others, who were arrested in connection with the case.
The order assumes significance as a trial court earlier on June 10 had granted bail to suspended cricketers S Sreesanth, Ankeet Chavan and other accused in the case and had ticked off special cell of Delhi police for slapping stringent provisions of MCOCA on them.
The court granted bail on Monday to Rajasthan Royals’ player Chandila, ex-Ranji player Baburao Yadav and one of the alleged bookie Deepak Kumar but dismissed the bail applications of five other arrested accused.
Chandila was arrested on May 16. Chandila, Yadav and Kumar were granted bail on a personal bond of Rs 50,000 each with one surety of like amount while bail pleas of alleged bookies Ramesh Vyas, Ashwani Agarwal, Sunil Bhatia, Firoz Farid Ansari and Jitender Kumar Jain were dismissed by the court.
The court, in its 35-page order, said although Chandila was prima facie alleged to be a “key fixer” but there was no credible evidence against him regarding his knowledge about the entire scandal.
“All said and done, the evidence against accused Ajit Chandila is uninspiring since mens rea is a necessary ingredient for commission of a crime under MCOCA and although Chandila is prima facie a key fixer in spot/session fixing, there is no credible evidence” to show that he had “any knowledge or connection of accused bookies and conduit Sunil Bhatia having a nexus with the organised crime syndicate,” it said.
The court, however, pulled up the Delhi police for lack of coordination in getting incriminating evidence from the material seized by other probe agencies, including the Mumbai Police.
“This court cannot lose site of the fact that somewhere the special cell of Delhi police has a lot of explaining to do. Although, during the course of investigation name of conduits who have been handling or delivering money arising out of fruits of betting syndicate (such as Lokha based in Maharashtra and Lokesh based in Delhi) cropped up, surprisingly no worthwhile evidence has been unearthed during the police custody remand of the accused persons,” it said.
“It appears that the police has somewhere adopted ‘a pick and choose policy’ which cannot be appreciated. Moreover, there has been a complete lack of coordination in getting incriminating evidence from the material seized by the Mumbai police,” the court said.
It directed the Delhi police commissioner to take appropriate steps to ensure fair probe into the case.
While granting bail to Yadav and Kumar, the court said Yadav was the “weakest link” in the entire scandal and Kumar appeared to be a “punter”.
The court kept pending the bail plea of Chandra Prakash Jain, who was allegedly accepting bets, saying that probe against him is still going on and police is yet to file a chargesheet against him. (PTI)