A city court on Monday granted bail to suspended Rajasthan Royals spinner Ajit Chandila and two others accused in the IPL spot fixing case, while pulling up the special cell of the Delhi police for the lacunae in their investigation into the scam, says a report in The Indian Express.
“The 33-page order quelled allegations that the stringent provisions of Maharashtra Control of Organized Crime Act (MCOCA) had been improperly invoked in this case. The court held that case fell under MCOCA since the evidence showed a nexus between five of the accused and the organized crime syndicate headed by underworld don Dawood Ibrahim,” says the report.
The five accused bookies —Ashwani Agarwal, Ramesh Vyas, Firoz Ansari, Sunil Bhatia and Jitender Jain—were denied bail on Monday. The bail of another bookie, Chandresh Jain was reserved on grounds that investigation against him was not yet complete.
However, additional sessions judge Sharma released Chandila, ex-Ranji player Baburao Yadav and punter Deepak Kumar on bail, citing that their connection to this organized crime syndicate was "remote".
According to a report in Deccan Chronicle, the Police had filed its 6,000-page charge sheet against 39 persons. 40th accused Chandresh Jain was arrested after filing of the charge sheet in the case. Chandila was arrested along with two other cricketers S Sreesanth and Ankeet Chavan of Rajasthan Royals along with 26 others in the case.
The court had on June 10 granted bail to Sreesanth, Chavan and 19 others for lack of evidence against them to be charged under MCOCA. The police had in its charge sheet said that accused underworld don Dawood Ibrahim and his aide Chhota Shakeel, who have been "controlling the fixing and betting market" in cricket in India, were behind the IPL spot-fixing.
The other accused named in the charge sheet include Manoj Guddewar, Amit Kumar, Jiju Janardhan, Chandresh Patel, Mohd Yahya, Bhupender Nagar and Sayed Durez Ahmed. As per the charge sheet, the nine absconding persons are Dawood Ibrahim, Chhota Shakeel, their associates Dr Javed Chutani, Salman, Ehteysham, Mohd Amir and bookies Sanjay Aggarwal, Praveen Kumar and Sandeep Sharma.