Police investigations have revealed that Mumbai bookie Chandresh Patel was made to fix an IPL match for `6 crore with the “fake” Hyderabad Sunrisers players.
Sources from the Mumbai crime branch said that four Sunrisers players, who met bookie Patel in a Pune-based five star hotel in order to fix a match with the help of a mediator, were actually fake players. A mediator named Amir arranged the meeting with bogus players to dupe Patel. This revelation was made during an investigation by the Delhi police, following which a cheating offence has been registered against Amir on the complaint of Patel. Amir is said to have some other cheating cases against him.
Patel, a resident of Four Bungalows in Andheri, in his statement to the Mumbai crime branch on June 17, said, “On April 16, Jitu, Pravin, Yusuf and I went to Pune, where in Le Meridien hotel Amir’s friend Sunil introduced us to Sunrisers Hyderabad team players — (Thisara) Perera, (Hanuma) Vihari, Karan Sharma, Ashish Reddy and his brother Pritam Reddy.” On April 17, there was a match between Sunrisers Hyderabad and Pune Warriors.
Further probe by the Delhi police revealed that these four Sunrisers players were bogus. “Patel did not know that he was being duped by Amir with the help of the bogus cricket players and he thought that he met real players,” said a Mumbai crime branch officer.
When questioned about why the city police did not update this development in their IPL betting case chargesheet submitted before the court, the officer said, “The revelation came out in Delhi police’s probe, we cannot involve this in our investigation as they have booked Amir in a cheating case on the complaint of bookie Patel.”