Cops confirm other teams under scanner

Delhi police are conducting probe into possible involvement of players from two more IPL teams.

The Delhi police on Sunday informed a city court that they were conducting investigation into the possible involvement of players from two IPL teams,other than Rajasthan Royals,in the betting and fixing scandal.

Senior public prosecutor Rajiv Mohan made this statement during arguments while demanding two days of further police custody for Rajasthan Royals S Sreesanth and Ajit Chandila and suspected bookies Ashwini Aggarwal,Chandresh Patel and Baburao Yadav.

The court of Metropolitan Magistrate Anuj Aggarwal granted the police custody of the two cricketers,Chandresh and Aggarwal till Tuesday. Yadav was,however,sent to judicial custody by the court as police failed to bring specific allegations against him. Co-accused spinner Ankeet Chavan and bookies Jiju Janardhan,Deepak Kumar and Manan Bhat were also sent to a 14-day judicial custody.

The prosecutor told the court that Aggarwals bank account operated as a master account,through which all the monetary transactions were routed.

Further,Mohan told the magistrate that Aggarwal had named two more persons during his interrogation,one of whom,who has only been named as Amir was connected to the Dubai underworld and foreign financiers. Amir is a prominent figure with connections with conduits to Dubai based financiers and controllers, said Rajiv Mohan.

Regarding Sreesanths role,the prosecution told the court that the telephone records showed that soon after Sreesanths arrest,a call originating from Delhi was made to a person named Abhishek Shukla,who then cleaned out the hotel room that Sreesanth was staying in. The pacers advocate Vishal Gosain then asked the court to take note of the fact that the cricketers room was accessible to all and sundry and had been cleaned out by unknown persons after his arrest. Police also said that the credit card used by Sreesanth was issued on the basis of Shuklas PAN card details and Mohan added that their efforts to trace Shukla required custodial interrogation of Sreesanth and the other accused.

Meanwhile,Chavan and Sreesanth have filed bail applications,which will be heard by the court on Tuesday.

Rauf got Gold,watches

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Meanwhile,police have also found that gold jewellery and expensive watches worth Rs 5 lakh were gifted to Pakistani umpire Asad Rauf by Vindoo Dara Singh.

Bookie Pawan Jaipur also gave Rs 1 lakh to buy further gifts for Rauf,which Vindoo passed on to fellow accused Prem Taneja,who then accompanied Rauf on a shopping spree. These gifts were left at the New Delhi airport to be sent to Pakistan,where Rauf was allegedly supposed to pick them up. We have found a bill for the jewellery and watches in the two bags that we recovered from the Delhi airport,along with several pairs of shoes,jeans and leather belts, said a senior Crime Branch officer.