IPL spot fixing: Delhi court denies Sreesanth, 22 others bail, police invokes MCOCA provisions

Delhi's Chief Metropolitan Magistrate Lokesh Kumar on Tuesday extended the judicial custody of former Test fast bowler Shanthakumaran Sreesanth and 22 others till June 18 in connection with their respective roles in the T20 spot-fixing case.

The extension of judicial custody was effected after Delhi Police informed Kumar that it has invoked provisions of the Maharashtra Control of Organised Crimes Act (MCOCA) against all of them, as they were allegedly facilitating the illegal acts of underworld don Dawood Ibrahim and his aide Chhota Shakeel.

Out of 26 accused, T20 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.

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.

Among the other accused are Rajasthan Royals player Ajit Chandila, former T20 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.