Court remands alleged cricket bookie to 3 days' custody

A special court for Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA) cases sent a Delhi-based alleged bookie to Enforcement Directorate (ED) custody until May 28 in a multi-crore rupee IPL cricket betting case.
Special PMLA court Judge A P Bhojak remanded alleged bookie Mukesh Sharma to a three-day ED custody and also granted one-day custody of another Delhi-based alleged bookie Ritesh Bansal whose three-day remand ended today.
Sharma and Bansal were arrested by ED under relevant sections of PMLA from Delhi based on allegations of operating a UK-based betting website and subsequently placing bets on IPL matches.
While Sharma was arrested on May 21, Bansal was held on May 11 from Delhi. They were arrested during ED's raids in connection with an alleged Rs 4,000-crore money-laundering case against syndicates which took bets on IPL T-20 cricket matches.

They were brought here on transit remand by ED to probe the alleged multi-crore hawala and money laundering aspects of the international IPL cricket betting racket.
Sharma was produced here before court for the first time while Bansal was produced after his first remand ended today.

ED's remand plea stated that the due are associated with suspected bookies Tommy Patel and Kiran Mala who were arrested in March from a Vadodara-based farm house.
Patel and Mala allegedly accepted bets through the website betfair.Com, the ED plea stated.
ED told the court that Sharma owned log-in identities to the website to place bets and gave some of these indentities to Patel as well as Mala with Bansal's help.

ED sought remand of the duo so that they may be confronted in the presence of Patel and Mala to cross-examine facts.