At least five bookies, who are believed to be amongst the country’s top bookies and are wanted accused in the Mumbai police’s and Delhi police’s betting cases, have fled the country, highly placed sources in the police said. Soon, the Mumbai police will issue lookout notices against these bookies, wherein the immigration officials at any airport can catch them if them try to flee or gain entry in the country.
Additionally, on Wednesday, a local court extended Meiyappan’s police custody till May 31.
DCP (detection) Satyanarayan Choudhary on Wednesday said, “We will soon issue lookout notices against the bookies who are wanted in our case. We are working on identifying them and collecting their details as most of them go by their aliases.”
Mr Choudhary, however, refused to divulge the names of these bookies, but sources in the crime branch said that the police is about to initiate the process to issue these notices against Shobhan Mehta alias Shobhan Kalachowki, Chandresh Jain alias Jupiter, Devendra Kothari, Keshu Pune and Lakhan Chouhan. All of them are wanted accused and believed to have fled the country.
Another source said that the police is still not sure about Jupiter’s status as to whether he has fled the country or not. So far, of the five, Jupiter is the most wanted accused in the Mumbai police list. The Delhi police and police from other states are also after him.
Shobhan Kalachowki is another well-known bookie and considered to be Mumbai’s top bookie. Shobhan, who is a diamond merchant, was arrested in 2005 along with bookie Ramesh Vyas. He allegedly operated a huge betting network that also fixed international cricket matches. He is said to have established a well-connected network spreading across Mum-bai, Jaipur, Chennai, Kolkata and Delhi.
Keshu Pune is believed to fled to Europe while the rest of the bookies are suspected to have fled to Dubai, sources added. Two other wanted accused Pawan and Sanjay Jaipur, with Vindoo Dara Singh’s held, have already fled to Dubai and lookout notices have been issued against them.
Meanwhile, the police probe has revealed that one of the three seized cellphone numbers used by Meiyappan to communicate with Vindoo Dara Singh to place bets in the ongoing IPL season, was registered in the name of one Kamalnathan P., an employee of Meiyappan and a resident of Babu Street in Chennai.