Delhi Police on Wednesday arrested four more persons including two bookies and a man said to be a friend of arrested cricketer S. Sreesanth in the spot fixing case.
A senior police official said among those arrested was Abhishek Shukla, who was known to the cricketer. He also claimed that Shukla helped Sreesanth hide the money he earned from spot fixing as well as some other items.
Nitin Jain and Vinod Sharma were the two bookies while the fourth man was Vicky alias Vikas Choudhary, who works as a bouncer.
The four were produced in a Delhi court on Wednesday by the police. Chief metropolitan magistrate Lokesh Kumar Sharma remanded three of them, Sharma, Jain and Chowdhury to police custody until Thursday.
Bookie Mohammed Yahya, arrested earlier, was also remanded to judicial custody until June 4 after Delhi Police said he was no longer required for custodial interrogation.
The court, however pulled up Delhi Police over Shukla’s arrest, even describing it as a “bad practice”. The court was also anguished that Shukla, arrested on Wednesday morning, was taken to Mumbai in connection with the probe without it being informed or its permission being taken.
According to police, Sharma and Jain are Delhi-based property dealers cum bookies. Vicky who worked with a night bar was in touch with both Sharma and Jain, they said.
Delhi Police called Shukla to join the investigations on Monday night. On Tuesday, he was questioned in connection with the spot-fixing case. Police said they had evidence against him and he was arrested under Section 201 (causing disappearance of evidence) of the IPC.
Police claimed that another friend of Sreesanth, Jiju Janardan, called up Abhishek and asked him to hide all the evidence against the cricketer, which it was trying to recover
“We have accounted for `5 lakh out of the `10 lakh Sreesanth got for alleged spot-fixing. Shukla has allegedly hidden the remaining amount belonging to Sreesanth as well as Jiju Janardhan, the cricketer’s friend,” said the police official.