Tainted Indian premier League (IPL) cricketers S Sreesanth, Ajit Chandila and Ankeet Chavan faced a last round of questioning by Delhi Police on Tuesday before being taken to a court in the city.
The questioning of the trio, whose IPL contract with the Rajasthan Royals franchise has been suspended, came even as the Supreme Court fixed a 2 p.m. deadline to hear a plea seeking a stay on all the remaining IPL 6 matches in the view of the spot-fixing scandal.
Meanwhile, Chennai Police has arrested one more bookie identified as Prashant in connection with the IPL spot-fixing scandal. Police said they have recovered Rs.4 lakh cash.
Union Law and Justice Minister Kapil Sibal is also presiding over a meeting to decide on creating a new law to make fixing a criminal offence.
The five-day police custody of Sreesanth, Chandila and Chavan, besides the 11 bookies, ends Tuesday.
They will be produced in a Delhi court, and according to police sources, the latter will seek further custody of the three cricketers, and seven of the 11 bookies.
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Meanwhile, Baburao Yadav, the former Ranji cricketer who was detained on Monday, has been formally arrested and is also likely to be produced before a court.
Even as Sreesanth's lawyer prepares to file for bail, the case against him and Chandila has tightened with developments in the probe by the Delhi Police and the Mumbai Police.
The intense competitiveness between Delhi and Mumbai police in the ongoing probe is throwing up key results.
On Monday, the Delhi Police recovered Rs 20 lakh from the house of Ajit Chandila's relative and announced that Chandila had accompanied the raiding team and pointed out the cash kept in his kit, makes it a key linking evidence against him.
In Mumbai, police managed to find leads against Sreesanth, recovering pictures of him with known bookie Jupiter and evidence of several deleted email conversations believed to be between the arrested conduit Jiju Janardhan and Sreesanth.
Interestingly, the analysis of Sreesanth's laptop has also revealed his interactions with a casting director, who had mailed him several pictures of models, as well as a folder containing numbers with code names to each. The police also now have evidence that Sreesanth sent a car to get a person picked from the international airport, believed to be Jupiter.
The Mumbai Police also established key links of arrested bookies with Pakistan based operatives. At least 30 such Pakistani links have been established so far.
The questioning of alleged ring leader Ramesh Vyas has now led to the identification of at least 15 more bookies who are now being hunted.
In Delhi, the BCCI formally joined the probe as its anti-corruption wing chief Ravi Sawani met Delhi Police chief Neeraj Kumar on Monday.
"We are conducting a separate probe. Rajasthan Royals is the most affected team and they have sent a complaint to the police, which will be a part of their FIR," Sawani said.
Delhi Police also recorded voice samples of two of the arrested bookies and Chandila. There is still no clarity on whether the police have Sreesanth's alleged conversations with bookies on tape.
The voice samples are a key evidence and will be sent to the forensic lab for matching with tapped phone conversations with the FSL report likely to be used as scientific evidence to establish the chain.
However, the big question is whether the Delhi and Mumbai police can formally cooperate to share key linking evidence against the players in a case which is fast acquiring international ramifications.