IPL spot-fixing: MCOCA against fixers?

Probing deeper into the IPL spot-fixing scam, the Mumbai police has seized cricketer S Sreesanth's iPhone, laptops, data cards, US dollars and Rs 72,290 cash from his hotel room at the Sofitel Hotel at Bandra Kurla Complex. They have also confiscated the personal belongings of Sreesanth's relative-cum-bookie Jiju Janardhan, a top police officer said on Saturday.

Joint Police Commissioner (Crime) Himanshu Roy, who is spearheading the investigations, revealed that the Mumbai police is also scanning Sreesanth's diaries, which contain significant information pertaining to the scam.

The police searched the room in a five- star hotel in south Mumbai where Sreesanth and Janardhan had checked in after making a booking through Tamarind Tours and Travels, he said.

" We are scanning the CCTV footage of the hotel to find out who they met during their stay there, their movements, and visitors who called on them," Roy said, adding that the Mumbai police will reconstruct the sequence of events in the hotel on May 14 and 15 until his arrest by the Delhi Police.

In another development, another bookie, Pravin Bera, was nabbed on Saturday for his role in the spot- fixing scam.

Besides Pravin Bera, Ramesh Vyas, Pankaj Shah alias Lotus ( believed to be close to the Dawood Ibrahim gang), Ashok Vyas, Pandurang Kadam, and Niraj Shah have also been arrested so far.

On May 14, the police had raided bookie Ramesh Vyas's office in Kalbadevi and nabbed him. Investigators picked up a rich haul of 92 mobile phones, 18 SIM cards, account books, six cheque books, a laptop, a set top box, a television, a calculator and Rs 57,750 in cash.

"Thirty of the mobile phones were used to make conference calls to bookies in India, Pakistan and Dubai by Vyas, who was in touch with all the bookies and had also given them some money," said Roy, who also hinted there would be more arrests.

Roy said that the police were contemplating slapping the stringent Maharashtra Control of Organised Crime Act (MCOCA) on all the accused after complying with the necessary pre-conditions.
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