Seeking to tighten the noose around key IPl spot-fixing scam accused Gurunath Meiyappan, the Mumbai Police on Monday recovered three of the four mobiles allegedly used by him for placing bets on T20 matches, a diary, 47 CSK T-shirts and items of merchandise from his Chennai premises and readied papers to summon his close associate, a Chennai-based hotelier and crucial link between him and arrested actor Vindoo Singh Randhawa.
On a day when the city crime branch sleuths arrested two more leading bookies – taking the total arrests in the scam investigations to 12, a visiting team of investigators searched Meiyappan’s 70-foot yacht berthed off Marina beach in Chennai and seized a "crucial" mobile phone used allegedly by him to place bets on IPl matches and pass on team strategy to Vindoo and others.
Identifying the Meiyappan’s hotelier-aide, whom the investigators are summoning for questioning, as Vikram Agarwal, Mumbai’s Joint Commissioner (crime) Himanshu Roy said: "Agarwal, a hotelier, who was handling Chennai operations of the betting syndicate, is a crucial link between Meiyappan and Vindoo. We will be issuing summons to him asking him to appear before us for questioning”.
Talking to media persons here in the evening, Roy – who is spearheading the scam investigations, claimed that Agarwal, owner of Radisson Blu Hotel in Chennai, was also a "key link" between the betting syndicate and Bollywood celebrities. Roy, however, declined to identify the film personalities who were in touch with Agarwal.
According to investigators, Agarwal knew Meiyappan for the last 15 years and received important insider information about players from CSK and other IPl teams from him. Agarwal was introduced to Vindoo by Meiyappan after they came in contact with each other two years ago.
Meanwhile, the searches carried out on Meiyappan’s yacht earlier in the day proved to be extremely useful for the investigations.
For, ever since they sought and obtained the custody of Meiyappan from a Mumbai court on Saturday, the investigators were on the look-out of four mobile phones that Meiyappan was allegedly using to place bets on IPl matches and also speak to people on the sly on matters relating to the T20 matches.
While they had recovered two mobile phones during a raid on Meiyappan’s residence on Sunday, the investigators seized one more mobile phone belonging to him from his yacht. The mobile seized from the yacht is crucial for them by way of evidence, as it was through this that Meiyappan was in constant touch with arrested actor Vindoo.
“We had earlier recovered two mobile phones from Meiyappan’s residence, we seized another one from the yacht today. The mobile phone seized from the yacht is very crucial to our investigation, because it has in the call data records between Meiyappan and Vindoo which have now been traced to the yacht,” a senior investigating official said.