A city court on Monday granted the Delhi Police custody of suspended Rajasthan Royals player Ajit Chandila for 3 more days. The purpose of this action is to confront and corroborate the statements of co-accused with Chandila and to emphasize the aspect of "organized crime syndicate" in the Indian Premier League spot-fixing case.
In fact, Chandila was arrested on 16th May and has been coined as the "main conspirator" in the case. Reportedly, Additional Public Prosecutor Rajiv Mohan conveyed the court of additional sessions judge Ajay Kumar Jain that Chandila was "the centre for coordinating with the Ashwani Aggarwal group through Sunil Bhatia". Alleged Mohan revealed that he was in "constant touch with the cricketers who were supposed to be fixed".
The police plea noted that during the investigation, supportive evidences like two mobiles used by him in spot/match fixing, intercepted voice calls and Rs 20 lakhs were recovered. In addition, the police alleged that they have recovered two cheques of Rs 8 lakh each, which was offered to Sunil Bhatia by Chandila "in lieu of money taken for spot-fixing".
Meanwhile, Chandila's lawyer Rakesh Kumar claimed that the police had "malafidely invoked MCOCA to deny bail to the accused". He disclosed that the bookies that Chandila was allegedly in touch with-Kiran D Hole and Manish were granted bail by another judge last week. The lawyer explained that he falls into the category merely of a facilitator or abettor. He interrogated that why should he stay in custody while the alleged bookies have been granted bail? However, the arguments were dismissed by the court.
The court did not consider the confessional statements of "mega bookie" Ramesh Vyas. Actually, Bhatia, the henchman of Delhi bookie Ashwini Aggarwal too had reportedly recorded his confession in an in-chamber proceedings before a magistrate court on Monday. Aggarwal who is now in custody of the Mumbai Police, could possibly be transferred to Delhi on Tuesday or Wednesday.
To be precise, the bail pleas of Chandila, Ashwini, Vyas, Bhatia and two others were supposed to be heard on Monday has been postponed till 22nd June.
