In the first instance of a Bollywood link to the latest spot-fixing scandal in cricket, the Mumbai Crime Branch on Tuesday arrested actor Vindoo Singh Randhawa, son of late wrestler-turned-actor Dara Singh, for his alleged links with bookies involved in the IPl spot-fixing scam. Vindoo has been booked under Sections 420, 465, 466 467 and 468 of the IPC (all sections dealing with forgery).
Sources said that Vindoo, winner of reality television show Bigg Boss Season 3, had been in touch with some bookies arrested in the IPl spot-fixing scam. Himself reportedly into betting, Vindoo was on many occasions spotted watching IPl matches and attending post-match parties. Investigators have a reason to believe that Vindoo, who has been spotted with IPl cricketers, had played a conduit between bookies and cricketers.
In another equally significant development that established the hawala link to the scam, investigators arrested an operator with international links, Alpesh Kumar Bhagwandas Patel, who channelised money among bookies and routed the money to punters. The police seized an unaccounted cash of `1.28 crore from Patel.
While 49-year-old Vindoo was arrested from his Juhu residence in north-west Mumbai, Patel (39) was taken into custody soon after the investigators raided two of his offices at Kalbadevi and near Pancharatna building at Opera House.
Prem Taneja, another bookie, who was picked up from the Mumbai airport on Monday while he was trying to flee to Dubai, was formally arrested on Tuesday.
The trio was produced before the Esplanade Magistrate Court, which remanded them in police custody till May 24. Talking to the media, Mumbai's Joint Commissioner of Police (Crime) Himanshu Roy said: “He (Vindoo) has been in our scanner for a while now. He is actively in contact with bookies......bookies like Jaipur, Jupiter and lotus….He goes for (IPl) matches, he goes with the (prominent) people in these matches”.
Roy, however, declined to spell out the exact role of Vindoo in the spot-fixing scam. “We have arrested… we have got his remand now. As we speak, he is still in court. let me interrogate him first,” he said. Pressed further, Roy conceded that Vindoo Singh “has admitted certain things, which you would come to know in the days to come…..He is a colourful person.”
With the three fresh arrests, the total number of persons taken into custody by the Mumbai Police in connection with the latest IPl spot-fixing scam has gone up to nine.
last week, the city crime branch had arrested key bookie Ramesh Vyas, who managed the betting syndicate in the metropolis, and fellow bookies Pandurang Kadam, Ashok Vyas alias Jupiter, Neeraj Shah, Pravin Bera and Pankaj Shah, alias lotus.
Incidentally, even the three newly arrested persons - Vindoo, Patel and Taneja -- have allegedly close links with Vyas, who was arrested along with two others after a raid on a Kalbadevi residence in south Mumbai on May 14.
From Vindoo, the police have seized a laptop, diaries and two phones. “We would come to know about him more in the coming days,” Roy said.
More than Vindoo, Patel is a prize catch for the investigators. Sources said it was Patel, who routed the money through hawala - from Mumbai to Dubai and elsewhere or from Mumbai to Mumbai, Mumbai to Delhi -- among various people involved in the scam. The investigators suspect that Patel had links with Sunil Dubai, a leading Dubai-based bookie, who is the kingpin of the IPl spot fixing racket.