Court rejects bail to Sreesanth

A Delhi court Tuesday refused to grant bail to cricketer S. Sreesanth and extended his judicial custody till June 18 in the IPL spot fixing case.

Chief Metropolitan Magistrate Lokesh Kumar Sharma denied bail to the cricketer after Delhi Police said it had also invoked the Maharashtra Control of Organised Crime Act (MCOCA) against Sreesanth and 25 others.

Sreesanth and 16 accused have filed bail pleas.

The court was told that MCOCA has been invoked against the accused as they were allegedly facilitating the illegal acts of underworld don Dawood Ibrahim and his aide Chhota Shakeel.

Rajasthan Royals players Sreesanth, Ajit Chandila and Ankeet Chavan and 22 others were arrested after Delhi Police intercepted telephone calls of those linked to the Mumbai underworld.

Of the 26 accused, Chavan and Sreesanth's friend Abhishek Shukla have been given bail. Co-accused Ashwani Aggarwal was sent to Mumbai on a production warrant issued by a court there.

Now that MCOCA has been invoked against accused, Additional Sessions Judge Sanjeev Jain will hear the bail applications of 16 accused.

Apart from the three Rajasthan players, the other accused include former IPL 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 court was earlier informed that police were investigating the angle of Dawood Ibrahim and that interception of calls suggested several big names may be involved in the spot fixing.

Police said they were working on missing links.