The noose around disgraced former Indian speedster Shantakumaran Sreesanth tightened further with the arrest of his close confidante and conduit Abhishek Shukla.
The Investigating Officer (IO) placed Shukla under arrest on the charges of helping Sreesanth in hiding the ‘slush money’ and some important articles brought by the cricketer.
Jiju Janardhan, a player-tuned-bookie had reportedly called up Shukla to remove articles from Sreesanth’s room at hotel Sofitel at Bandra in Mumbai after the Delhi Police arrested him from a vehicle at Carter Road. Jiju was also raided by the Special Cell sleuths soon after. The Delhi Police has arrested 26 people in this regard and six bookies were also arrested by the Goa Police on the information provided by it.
Special Commissioner of Police, Special Cell SN Shrivastava said Shukla’s arrest is an important development and his links with the cricketer has been well established. Police have recovered articles worth `5 lakh on the instance of Sreesanth that he had purchased from the money that he had received from the bookies.
Three more accused persons — Vicky Bharadwaj, Vindon Sharma alias Monu and Nitin Jain — were also arrested along with Abhishek Shukla, he said. With their arrests, the Delhi Police had arrested 26 people, including Sreesanth, Ajit Chandila and Ankeet Chavan.
Shukla was summoned by the IO to join the investigations on Tuesday and he has been booked under IPC Section 201 for the destruction of evidence. He was placed under arrest on Wednesday after he was confronted in light of the evidence against him. Investigations have revealed that it was Shukla who removed the articles and money hidden by Sreesanth and he was taken to Mumbai for the recovery of the same articles, a police official said.
Shukla had also hidden the articles and money belongs to Jiju at his behest. Investigators had traced a call that Jiju had reportedly made to Shukla soon after the arrest of Sreesanth and instructed him to wipe out all the evidence from the room that was kept in the form of cash and expensive items.
Vicky Bhardwaj, Vinod Sharma and Nitin Jain were arrested after Special Cell picked up Bhupender
Nagar from Greater Noida
on Monday.
Nagar who worked with South east Delhi’s highly-rated pub Jinxx had managed to give cop the slip from a five star hotel after Special Cell raided the pub to get him. It was revealed that Vicky Chowdhury, another bouncer had introduced Faridabad based Chandila to two punters Nitin Jain and Vinod Sharma. Jain owns a factory while Sharma dabbles in properties.
Investigations have revealed that it was Nagar who brought two bookies face to face with Chandila. A meeting had taken place between the two bookies and Chandila in Jaipur before a match that was to be played at Ranchi between the Kolkata Knight Riders and Royal Challengers Bangalore. What is more startling is the fact that bookies had reportedly asked Chandila about the final outcome of the match and he had predicted that KKR was going to win and it was KKR that won, a police official added.