NEW DELHI, June 20:
Suspended cricketer Ajit Chandila was today remanded to 12 days of judicial custody by a Delhi court after police said that his custodial interrogation in the IPL spot-fixing case was over.
Chandila, who has been quizzed in custody for three days, was produced before vacation judge Rajender Kumar Shastri who sent him to Tihar jail till July 2.
“The accused (Chandila) is remanded in JC till July 2,” the court said.
Chandila was sent to jail after the Delhi police special cell told the court that they do not require his further custody.
The police, however, said the investigation is on.
Chandila was handed over to the probe agency again after the police had invoked stringent Maharashtra Control of Organised Crimes Act (MCOCA) and sought his custodial interrogation on the ground that it wanted to corroborate the evidence collected so far from other accused in the case.
The Delhi Police had on May 16 arrested three cricketers — S Sreesanth, Chandila and Ankeet Chavan of Rajasthan Royal’s — on charges of spot-fixing. Later, the trio were on May 28 sent to judicial custody till June 18.
However, the Delhi Police on June 3 had slapped MCOCA on Sreesanth, Chandila, Chavan and 25 others in the case, alleging they were acting under the command of underworld don Dawood Ibrahim and Chhota Shakeel.
The sessions court had granted bail to Sreesanth, Chavan and 18 others due to lack of evidence to be charged under MCOCA.
Sreesanth’s friend Abhishek Shukla, arrested for allegedly removing the cricketer’s money and articles from his hotel room in Mumbai, was granted bail by the magisterial court as the police had failed to convince that Shukla was a part of the IPL spot-fixing scandal.
Besides Chandila, bookies Sunil Bhatia, Ramesh Vyas, Firoz Ansari, Deepak Kumar and ex-Ranji player Babu Rao Yadav are also in judicial custody till July 2.
At present, one bookie Ashwani Aggarwal is in Mumbai police custody, for whom the Delhi court has issued a production warrant for June 22.
Apart from Chandila, Bhatia and Vyas, the others whose bail pleas will be heard on June 22 are bookies Ashwani and Deepak Kumar and player Baburao Yadav.
Earlier, Delhi police, while opposing Chandila’s bail plea, had said he was a “key conspirator” in the entire IPL spot-fixing case and was acting at the behest of a syndicate run by Dawood Ibrahim. (PTI)
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