JOIN US BCCI president N Srinivasan’s son-in-law Gurunath Meiyappan and actor Vindoo Dara Singh will remain in police custody till June 3 in the IPL betting and spot-fixing scandal.
Meiyappan and Vindoo were produced before the court along with history-sheeters Prem Taneja, a book-maker, and Alpesh Patel, a hawala operator, in Mumbai on Friday. The police custody of all the four arrested was extended till June 3.
In its remand extension application, police stressed on the suspected nexus between the accused and some absconding bookies, namely Sanjay Jaipur, Pawan Jaipur and Jupiter.
In a related development, Chennai hotelier Vikram Agarwal aka Victor, early on Friday morning quietly answered the summons notice by appearing before the police. On Thursday, the Madras High Court had rejected his anticipatory bail application.
Agarwal, suspected to be a key person of the Chennai betting syndicate, till late in the day was interrogated regarding his relationship with Meiyappan, Vindoo and other Bollywood celebrities. Later he was allowed to go. What came about of the questioning is not known.Police sources also revealed recordings of telephonic conversations between Meiyappan and Vindoo where the former cautions the latter about warnings from the ICC.
Interestingly, police has not made any of these transcripts a part of the remand application. The recordings were primarily a result of wire-tapping carried out by the Maharashtra Anti-Terrorism Squad (ATS), while investigating possible financial nexus between betting syndicates and terror capsules.
The ATS, after stumbling upon phone calls made by betting syndicates to Pakistan, kept a tab on these numbers. The department then recorded conversations of several illegal book-makers and punters with known records.
The tapping led the ATS to Vindoo. It was during one such interception that the ATS came across a conversation between the actor and Meiyappan. They recorded scores of conversations between the duo and in the second week of May, along with the transcripts, handed it over to the Mumbai CB-CID.
The police revealed that a team has been sent to Goa to gain custody of one Paresh Bhatia who is suspected to have had illegal financial dealings with the arrested.