Court refuses to give custody of six bookies to Mumbai cops

Mumbai: A local court today remanded six bookies, arrested in connection with alleged IPL betting syndicate, in judicial custody till 5 June. “Despite ample opportunities provided, the investigating officer has not pointed out who has been cheated and why,” additional metropolitan magistrate M N Saleem observed while remanding all the accused in judicial custody. Mumbai Police has so far arrested six bookies - Ramesh Vyas, Pandurang Kadam, Ashok Vyas, Neeraj Shah, Pravin Bera and Pankaj Shah alias Lotus in connection with the IPL betting case. [caption id=“attachment_806141” align=“alignleft” width=“380”] Vindu was arrested for his links with bookies. Image courtesy: Ibnlive[/caption] All the bookies have filed bail applications and the Mumbai crime branch will file a reply on 24 May. The magistrate also reprimanded the police saying the ground for taking custody written in the remand application is similar to the earlier submitted remand plea. The court also observed that the phone instruments and other gadgets used for betting have been recovered from the bookies and in view of the above facts “there is no sufficient ground for police custody”. The crime branch told the court that it wants to confront the six accused with Bollywood actor Vindoo Randhawa, son of late wrestler-actor Dara Singh, arrested yesterday for his alleged association with bookies. The officials also said voice samples of the accused have to be taken and they have to confront the accused with each other. However, defence lawyers pointed out that the custody is not required for recording voice samples and for confronting with other accused. On May 20, the city police, which had arrested six bookies in connection with the IPL betting, told the court that they would investigate if the Pakistanis with whom the bookies were in touch had any terror links or connections with the organised crime syndicates. The arrested bookies were allegedly not only accepting the betting but were also connecting calls from bookies in Pakistan and Dubai. The Crime branch told the court that they want to elicit information about the absconding bookies from the arrested bookies. PTI