Phone records make CBI zero in on Delhi captain Ajay Sharma

The numbers of a Delhi bookie and restaurant-owner, Ratan Mehta, figure prominently in the reams of print-outs of telephone records obtained by the CBI. These records pertain to a five-year period, and sources say if the need arose, records prior to that can also be asked for.

While Sharma left for London sometime in April, ostensibly to play county cricket for the Padiham Cricket Club, Mehta is said to have gone “underground”. The CBI has visited Mini Mahal, the restaurant owned by Mehta in Vasant Vihar, but could not learn anything about his whereabouts.

The agency is now in the process of contacting the Secretary of the Padiham Cricket Club (located at Burnley B B 128, JS, England) to find out whether Sharma is actually on contract to play with them till September as they have been told. The CBI has learnt that Sharma holds a valid passport issued in June 1998.

The CBI is said to have obtained this information from Sharma’s wife, Sanjana, was well as his employers, the Central Warehousing Corporation. Once the information about his contract with the Padiham Cricket Club comes in, the agency may decide to question him on the phone about his frequent contacts with bookies and cricketers.

Sharma made his debut for India in 1988 and played 31 One-day internationals but only one Test match against West Indies. Since then, he has been popular only in the domestic circuit.

But his association with the Indian players obviously did not end and, sources say, besides being in constant touch on phone, Sharma wasregularly visiting the hotels where the Indian squad was staying during international fixtures. His contacts with bookies intensified during these tournaments.

Ajay Sharma has been juggling at least four to five cellphones and CBI sleuths are going through the laborious exercise of listing the names and numbers of players and bookies called. His links with Sanjeev Chawla, the Delhi-based bookie who left for London when the match-fixing scam broke, as well as Kishan Kumar and Rajesh Kalra — prime suspects in the case being handled by the Delhi Police — are being investigated. His assets, business and professional income are also being looked into.

While these are leads collected by the CBI, it is to be recalled that a mysterious Indian player whose name begins with “A” finds mention in the Hansie Cronje tapes. A weekly news magazine had earlier described Sharma as a “cricketer-bookie king” and published a list of phone calls exchanged between Mohammed Azharuddin and Sharma in March this year (during the India-South Africa series).

The telephone record was the result of surveillance done by the Delhi Police, and the magazine had reported that between March 1 and April 18, Ajay Sharma had run up a bill of Rs 12,000 on just one cellphone and that some of the numbers called belonged to well-known bookies in Delhi.