Mumbai Police outpaced by Delhi counterpart in action

A swift covert operation by the Delhi Police into spot-fixing in Indian Premier League (IPL) matches outpaced investigations into the same controversy by the Mumbai Police.

Two separate teams of the Delhi police swung into action just after Wednesday midnight. While one unit rounded up Ankit Chavan and Ajit Chandila of Rajasthan Royals from the Trident Hotel at Nariman Point, their colleague and star bowler S Sreesanth was arrested at a friend’s house at Worli Sea-face.

The operation was carried out in the morning. The arrests were shown at two local police stations. The transit remand was taken for the trio before they were flown in a low-cost airline to New Delhi.

Interestingly, the Mumbai Police on Wednesday after realising that police officers from Delhi were also tracking IPL players who were rigging matches, announced late in the night the arrest of bet collectors—Ashok Vyas, Ramesh Vyas and Pandurang Kadam—at a mansion in south Mumbai’s Kalbadevi.

The police also claimed that arrests of bookmakers agents led to the seizure of mobile phones, SIM cards and Rs 60,000 in cash.

The Mumbai police stumbled upon an open betting racket involving youngsters early this week while solving the murder of a diamond merchant’s 13-year-old son Aditya Ranka by his cousin Himanshu Ranka (28) and one Brijesh Sanghvi (25).

The two youths while laying bets in IPL matches had run up a debt of over Rs 30 lakh. The duo had abducted Aditya for a ransom to pay off the bookmakers involved in accepting bets from punters.

The information on bookmakers was passed on to the crime branch which swung into action and took into custody bet collectors who reportedly worked for some Pakistan-based bookmakers.