Sreesanth in judicial custody till June 18, MCOCA invoked

A court here today extended till June 18 judicial custody of pacer S Sreesanth and 22 others in the IPL spot fixing case after Delhi Police informed it has invoked MCOCA provisions against them.

Police told the court that the provisions of the Maharashtra Control of Organised Crimes Act (MCOCA) have been invoked against all the 26 accused as they were allegedly facilitating the illegal acts of underworld don Dawood Ibrahim and his aide Chhota Shakeel.

Chief Metropolitan Magistrate Lokesh Kumar Sharma was also informed that MCOCA enables the police to seek further custodial interrogation of accused to unearth the organised syndicate in the case.

Out of 26 accused, IPL player Ankeet Chavan and Sreesanth's friend Abhishek Shukla are out on bail and co-accused Ashwani Aggarwal has been sent to Mumbai on a production warrant issued by a court there.

Instead of a magisterial court, Additional Sessions Judge Sanjeev Jain will now hear the bail applications of 16 accused in the case as MCOCA has been invoked.

The 16 accused, who have filed bail pleas include Sreesanth.The police's move of invoking MCOCA was opposed by the counsel for the accused, saying police does not have approval for it.

Advocate D P Singh, appearing for bookie Chandresh Patel argued that the accused, who was said to be having links with D-company has been given bail in Mumbai and here MCOCA has been invoked.

"How can players be accused of being a part of an organised crime syndicate," he argued.

The other 24 accused includes Sreesanth, Rajasthan Royals player Ajit Chandila, former IPL player Amit Kumar Singh and former Ranji players Manoj Guddewar and Babu Rao Yadav.

Bookies Jiju Janardhan, Deepak Kumar, Manan Bhat, Chandresh Patel, Ramakant Aggarwal, Rakesh, Sunil Bhatia, Kiran Dole, Ashwani Aggarwal, Mohd Yahya, Ajay Goel, Love Garg, Amit Gupta, Bhupender Nagar, Sunil Saxena, Sayed Durez Ahmed, bouncer Vikash Chowdhury and businessmen Vinod Sharma and Nitin Jain are also accused in the case.

The police had earlier told the court that it was probing the angle of underworld don Dawood Ibrahim in the case and had said that interception of various calls suggested that several big names may be involved in the episode as calls were made to Dawood.

The police had said there are some missing links and they are working on it.
"We are missing the link of the whole episode which will be proved very soon," the prosecutor had said, adding, "Some big names are also involved which I cannot disclose at this stage and they were in regular contact with D company."

Sreesanth, Chavan and Chandila, who all were playing for the IPL's Rajasthan Royals franchise, were arrested in Mumbai by Delhi Police for their alleged involvement in spot-fixing in IPL matches for payments of up to Rs 60 lakhs just for giving away pre-determined number of runs in an over.

These three players, who have been suspended by the BCCI, and the others arrested have been booked under section 420 (cheating) and 120-B (criminal conspiracy) of the IPC.

On May 21, the police had informed the court that section 409 of the IPC, which deals with criminal breach of trust and entails a maximum of life imprisonment along with fine, has been invoked against all the accused in the case.

The police had said they had added section 409 IPC as the agreement concerning IPL is a tripartite agreement between BCCI, Rajasthan Royals and the player and the agreement was an exclusive contract.

Regarding Sreesanth and other two cricketers, police had said that they had used various signs like putting towel in pocket for a fixed over and exercising before the over to give time to bettors to place their stakes.