All 14 accused in multi-crore cricket betting racket get bail

Vadodara: All the 14 accused arrested recently in connection with a multi-crore cricket betting case by the Enforcement Directorate were granted bail by a local court on Sunday.

Additional Senior Civil Judge D A Patel of Vadodara court released the accused, including Tommy Patel and Kiran Patel who are believed to be the kingpins of the racket, after they were produced at his house as court is closed on Sunday.

The court rejected the plea for remand of the accused by Special Operation Group (SOG) of the city police.

Vadodara police got custody of the accused from ED on March 20, a day after the agency busted the international cricket betting syndicate and arrested 15 persons including a juvenile.

All the accused were booked under the Foreign Exchange Management Act (FEMA).

During the raid, the ED arrested Tommy and Kiran from a farmhouse near Vadodara and seized 15 laptops, 100 mobile phones and some electronic devices.

Tommy, who is a BJP councillor from Unjha municipality in Mehsana district, had been arrested for his alleged involvement in the IPL spot-fixing case in 2013.

He was accused of paying Rs 1 lakh to a city-based cricketer to fix a match. He was released on bail later.

Kiran and Tommy allegedly accepted bets of as much as Rs 20 crore on each World Cup match and were in touch with all big bookies in the country, according to ED officials.

In addition, they were in real-time contact with bookies in Pakistan and Dubai. For a single match they took bets of Rs 10 crore from the bookies based in Pakistan and Dubai, and another Rs 10 crore bets from Indian bookies, the officials said, adding they used mobile phones, Skype as well as Betfair.Com (an online betting exchange).

According to officials, the betting transactions are estimated to the tune of Rs 4,000 crore.