Delhi Police teams fan out to 4 cities on IPL money trail, study bank accounts

New Delhi, May 18 (PTI): Delhi Police on Saturday despatched teams to Mumbai, Ahmedabad, Kolkata and Hyderabad to track the money trail in the Indian Premiere League (IPL) spot-fixing case even as it conducted raids for the second time at the Faridabad residence of Ajit Chandila, one of the three arrested cricketers. Investigators are also looking into the bank accounts of the players to trace the flow of money and are trying to find out how it was spend. TV footages of three matches in question from the official broadcaster were also sought by the police. They said the IPL spot-fixing case in which 14 people, including cricketers Sreesanth, Chandila and Ankeet Chavan were arrested is "still open-ended". Lawyers of all the three players have denied the involvement of the cricketers in the spot-fixing. Police sources claimed that bookies paid Rs 10 lakh as advance to Sreesanth and it was collected by his close friend Jiju Janardhan who was also arrested. Bookies had allegedly struck a deal of Rs 40 lakh with Sreesanth through Jiju. Asked about the evidence against the Kerala pacer, the sources did not say whether he directly spoke to bookies but claimed that he used Jiju's phone, which was tapped, to speak to "others". "We have strong evidence against him. We know how the advance money he got from the bookies," a senior police officer said. Investigators said they do not feel the need to conduct searches at the residences of Sreesanth and Chavan "as of now" as they have enough proof against them. "We are satisfied with the progress in the probe but this is not the end. We have asked SetMax to provide us with raw footage of the three matches in which the arrested players have allegedly indulged in spot-fixing. They players have willingly indulged in this," the officer said. Police raided the Faridabad residence of Chandila for the second time. They had searched his residence on Thursday, the day he was arrested.