The Indian Premier League match between Kolkata Knight Riders and Royal Challengers Bangalore held in Ranchi on May 12 has come under the Delhi Police Special Cell’s scanner after suspended Rajasthan Royals’ Ajit Chandila and the bookies with whom he had links suggested that the match was rigged. “The bookies had contacted Chandila for a tip-off on which of the two teams would win the match and had promised him a sum of Rs. 30 lakh for the same,” said a police officer.
The bookies allegedly paid an initial amount of Rs. 2 lakh to Chandila. “Bhupender Nagar, a security manager of two Delhi night clubs, was in contact with Chandila, a regular visitor to one of the clubs at a luxury hotel in Nehru Place, for the past eight months. Nagar’s friend Vicky, who works as a bouncer at another nightclub in Delhi, approached him to arrange meetings with some cricketers in the first week of May. Nagar then invited Chandila, who was then in Bangalore, to a Vasant Kunj nightclub in South Delhi,” said the officer.
Chandila met Vicky at the nightclub. Subsequently, Vicky and Nagar reportedly went to Jaipur along with two bookies to finalise the deal with Chandila for information on the outcome of the match between KKR and RCB.
“Chandila told them that KKR would win the match, and it happened so. However, the bookies refused to pay up the rest of the amount to Chandila on the pretext that they suffered losses because of a low-scoring match. RCB, which batted first had scored 115, and KKR chased the target in the last over of the match,” said the officer.
The refusal led to a series of calls between Chandila and the bookies, who finally agreed to pay up Rs. 5 lakh. The money was to be paid to the cricketer through Vicky, but he along with Nagar appropriated the amount. “Vicky kept with him Rs. 2.85 lakh, giving away the rest to Nagar. We have phone intercepts in this regard, but are yet to come across any evidence to establish that the said match was rigged.”
While six alleged conduits of Ashwini Aggrawal alias Tinku Mandi besides Nagar, Sunil Saxena and C. Ahmed have been arrested during the past couple of days, the Special Cell has also questioned Abhishek Shukla, an event manager friend of S. Sreesanth who allegedly destroyed evidence by cleaning up the Indian pacer’s Mumbai hotel room after he was arrested.
Stating that both knew each other for the past six years, the police officer said Shukla’s PAN number was used several times to hide the transactions made for Sreesanth.
