Three-layered syndicate in IPL-6 spot-fixing: Delhi Police

A three-layered betting syndicate was involved in spot-fixing during the sixth edition of the Indian Premier League (IPL-6) with the prime movers being Karachi-based underworld don Dawood Ibrahim and his lieutenant Chhota Shakeel, three months of painstaking investigations by Delhi Police have revealed.

Apart from Dawood, Shakeel and Javed Chutani, also based overseas, the first layer included Indian bookies like Ashwani Aggarwal alias Tinku Mandi, Ramesh Vyas, Feroze, Jitendra Jain and Chandresh Jain alias Jupiter, according to the Delhi Police charge-sheet obtained by IANS.

The next layer comprised Indian bookies like Sunil Bhatia, Chandresh Patel and Manan Bhatt.

"We found fixers and their associates, like ex-players Manish Guddewar, Amit Kumar Singh and Baburao Yadav, were facilitating the contacts of fixers with the players, who executed the conspiracy on the playing field," the charge-sheet said of the third layer.

Three IPL players - S. Sreesanth, Ankeet Chavan and Ajeet Chandila - were arrested on spot-fixing charges May 16. Subsequently, 27 bookies were nabbed from the various parts of India in May, June and July, and one Aug 4.

Delhi Police got the initial lead in the first week of May when a phone call between a Dubai number and a Pakistani number was traced in India.

The charge-sheet says the interception of the phone calls between numbers in foreign countries was normally not possible, but in this case, due to traffic congestion, Delhi Police managed to trace a call between a Dubai number used by Chutani and a Pakistani number used by Dawood with the help of the International Telecommunication Union.

This revealed that Chutani had been in touch with Tinku Mandi in India. Chutani himself is not wanted in India and thus any communication made by him with an Indian entity would normally have remained beyond suspicion and would be treated as a normal conversation. Therefore, Chutani was freely speaking to Tinku Mandi.

While on one hand, Chutani conspired with Tinku Mandi, who was looking after the betting syndicate in northern India, on the other, he conspired with Ramesh Vyas, who looked after the betting syndicate in southern India.

Delhi Police had July 30 filed its charge-sheet in a MCOCA (Maharashtra Control of Organized Crime Act) court in the national capital.

(Alok Singh can be contacted at alok.s@ians.in)