TEAM HERALD
teamherald@herald-goa.com
PANJIM: Delhi police are now banking on the CCTV footage from off shore casinos to get possible details about the IPL spot fixing activities of cricketers and bookies who met onboard while in Goa.
The police who were working on the specific inputs about the frequent visits of cricketers and bookies, to the off shore casinos, are trying to establish evidence against them, a senior officer said.
Highly placed Delhi police sources have confirmed that some of the off-shore vessels were indeed a meeting point for the rested cricketers and bookies, who are at present are eluding police arrests.
“We have sought CCTV grabs from the casinos where they would meet. Only after the footage is made available to us, will it be established whether betting did happen,” the officer told Herald over the phone from Delhi.
After their initial search did not make much headway, Delhi police will revisit the places again with more inputs depending on the interrogation of the bookies in their custody.
The police are considering issuing look out circular against them.
The officer told Herald arrested cricketers S Sreesanth, Ajit Chandila and Ankeet Chavan visited Goa and had ample contacts.
“These cricketers were in good contacts with Goan cricketers who play domestic and international cricket. Although we are not suspecting local cricketers’ involvement as of now, our investigation will reveal more,” the officer suggested.
Meanwhile, the failure of Goa police’s intelligence in Calangute has come to the fore with the arrests of six bookies. Police ironically had no clue of bookies staying there for 45 days, before finally arresting them.
Paresh Asarpota, Ketan Chawda, Ritesh Patel, Amit Papat, Sandeep Asarpota and Nikunj Lalan were arrested from a rented villa in Candolim on a tip off last Sunday.
In a major failure to check the antecedents of the tenants in an area thickly populated by tenants, Goa police failed to have the tenant verification form filled by the bookies, for which the owner of the villa Sushant Chabra will be brought to book.
“The main blame should be on the beat police who have failed to gather information about those staying in the bungalow,” one of the neighbours told Herald, requesting anonymity.
