Ex-Ranji player, two others arrested for IPL scam

Three more people have been arrested in the Indian Premier League spot fixing case, Delhi Police said Sunday, taking the number of arrested to 18, including India fast bowler S. Sreesanth and two other players of the Rajasthan Royals.

The three - Sunil Bhatia, 44, Kiran Dole, 43, and Manish Gudewa, 32 - all natives of Nagpur were arrested from Maharashtra's Aurangabad city early Sunday morning and are "fixers" who mediated between the bookies and the players.

The three were arrested after their phones were put on surveillance by police.

"These three are fixers who fixed the meeting between the bookies and players and did the on-spot fixing during the match," a Delhi Police official said.

Police said Gudewa was a Ranji level cricket player and played for Vidarbha team between 2003-05.

He helped Dole and Bhatia in arranging meetings with Ajit Chandila - one of the arrested Rajasthan Royals players - in various cities including Delhi, Gurgaon, Chandigarh and Bombay for fixing the matches.

During the IPL matches, the three stayed in Nagpur and Bombay. The teams of Delhi Police have been sent to the places to collect the CCTV footage from the hotels where they stayed.

Police said that an associate of these three fixers has also been identified as Babu Ram Yadav, and he will be apprehended soon.

According to an officer, Yadav was a cricket player and played for the Indian Railways.

Of the 12 arrested bookies, Amit Singh and Jiju Janardhan were also players. Singh played for the Rajasthan Royals last year in the IPL while Janardhan was a club level player who played with Sreesanth in Kerala, the officer said.

Delhi Police arrested S. Sreesanth, Chandila and Ankeet Chavan and 11 bookies in a post-midnight operation in Delhi, Mumbai and Ahemdabad May 16 for spot fixing in IPL matches for payments of up to Rs.60 lakh, just for giving away a pre-determined number of runs in an over.

Another bookie was arrested in Mumbai Sunday.