Punjab bookies link in fake selection camps for IPL teams

Shiv Kumar

Tribune News Service

Mumbai, December 7

The Mumbai Police are investigating the alleged links of three notorious bookies operating from Punjab, Haryana, Chandigarh and Delhi with a countrywide racket where fake selection camps were held to con young players aspiring to play for IPL teams.

Police sources said here that the three bookies, RS Dhindwal, Shubham Jain and Priyank Saxena who were active in Punjab, Haryana, Delhi and Chandigarh were linked to the brains behind the fake selection camps.

(Follow The Tribune on Facebook; and Twitter @thetribunechd)

The police had arrested Amritsar-based Aditya Bhandari, who ran the Arnav Cricket Academy, for allegedly organising selection camps on behalf of Kings XI Punjab.

Bhandari illegally used the logos of the team and was holding these camps in western India.

One of these camps were being held at Mumbai’s Oval Maidan when the law caught up with the brains behind the racket.

Bhandari’s associates Harvinder Singh, Ravindra Gupta and Satendra Singh were picked up from the Maidan itself, according to police.

According to the police, the four of them were linked to the bookies and were in touch with young cricketers in several IPL teams.

Investigators from the Board of Control for Cricket in India have also been provided with incriminating information against several young cricketers who may have been linked to these bookies in last summer’s IPL season, police said.

Interrogation of the arrested persons has resulted in the unearthing of several residential and commercial properties owned by the bookies and their associates in Mumbai, Pune and other parts of Maharashtra, police said.

These may have been purchased from the ill-gotten gains from the betting rackets, police feel.

Incidentally the name of bookie Shubham Jain had also figured in the match-fixing controversy involving Kerala-based cricketer S Sreesanth.