A special court for Prevention of Money Laundering Act cases today issued non-bailable warrant against four accused persons with regard to an alleged cricket betting racket estimated to be worth Rs 4,000 crore.
The Special Prevention of Money-Laundering Act (PMLA) court Judge Ajit Kumar Bhojak issued warrants against four persons, alleged to be bookies--Kiran Mala, Tommy Patel, Suresh Parikh and Dharmesh Chauhan.
The court acted on an Enforcement Directorate (ED) plea which stated that the four have not appeared before the probe agency in this case, the prosecution's advocate Sudhir Gupta said.
The case is expected to come up for the hearing in due course of time.
On March 26, ED had registered a case of money laundering against them and frozen their bank accounts in connection with the alleged cricket betting racket.
The four persons have been charged under Sections 418 (cheating), Section 419 (punishment for cheating), Section 420 (cheating and dishonestly inducing delivery of property), Section 467 (forgery of valuable security), Section 471 (using as forged document) along with Section 120 (b) (criminal conspiracy) of Indian Penal Code, an ED official said.
The ED official said that the bookies did not turn up for qustioning in connection with the racket even after the probe agency served them with two summons, which led ED to seize their bank accounts today.
On March 19, ED had busted the racket and arrested Kiran Mala and Tommy Patel from a farmhouse on the outskirts of Vadodara city.
