CBI court rejects bail pleas of 2 bookies who worked as conduits for ED officer in sensational bribery case

Ahmedabad: A special CBI court today rejected the bail pleas of two alleged bookies, who were arrested last month for working as ‘conduit’ for the former Enforcement Directorate officer J P Singh in taking bribe from the accused of the over Rs 2000 crore IPL betting and Rs 10000 crore hawala racket corruption case.

The CBI had arrested Ahmedabad-based Jayesh Thakker and Mumbai-based Sonu Jalan and alleged that they had worked as “conduits” of Singh, the then ED Joint Director in Ahmedabad and “collected bribes” from accused in the Afroz Fatta hawala racket case and the IPL betting case, which Singh had unearthed.

The duo had filed bail pleas before a CBI court here which had reserved its verdict on September 14. Today the court rejected their pleas saying that the nature of allegations against them was grave. The court observed that they can’t be granted bail at this juncture.

Advocate of Sonu Jalan during the hearing had questioned the CBI investigation, arguing that his client was arrested nearly a year after the FIR was lodged. He had argued that even if allegations were true, the CBI has only arrested accomplice and the main accused (Singh) remains at large.

Almost a year after the CBI booked 3 officers of ED, Ahmedabad, including Singh, for demanding and accepting huge amount of bribe, the central agency last month arrested three bookies who worked as “middlemen” for the accused officers.

It arrested Sonu Jalan from Mumbai, J K Arora from Delhi and Jayesh Thakkar from Ahmedabad. The special CBI court in Ahmedabad remanded Thakkar and Jalan in CBI custody for seven days. Arora was to be produced before the court separately. The trio were allegedly informers and front men of J P Singh. Cast worth more than Rs 1 crore and incriminating materials were recovered from them.

It has been alleged that Sonu, a notorious bookie, and Arora acted as Singh’s informants. And based on their tip-offs, he would conduct raids on bookies. The third arrested bookie Jayesh Thakkar, a resident of Maninagar in Ahmedabad was also close to Singh.

The CBI on August 22 last year, had lodged an FIR naming Singh and two unidentified officers, based on a complaint given by Karnal Singh, director, ED, New Delhi. Since then, the accused officers have been summoned to Delhi more than twice and were grilled. They are facing charges of conspiracy and prevention of corruption act, 1988. Singh, an IRS officer who has been shunted out of Gujarat, was instrumental in busting the above mentioned hawala racket in Surat and international cricket betting racket, involving businessmen and hawala operators.

DeshGujarat