New Delhi:
A Delhi court has granted bail to Test cricketer S Sreesanth and 18 other people arrested on allegations of betting and spot-fixing in the Indian Premier League.
They will have to surrender their passports and they cannot travel abroad, but they are free to travel within the country, the court held.
Among those granted bail today are alleged bookie and Sreesanth's friend Jiju Janardhan and cricketer Ankeet Chavan. A third Rajasthan Royals player arrested in the case, Ajit Chandila, had not applied for bail.
They were all arrested last month on charges of spot-fixing; they will be released from Delhi's Tihar Jail tomorrow.
The court observed today the police has not produced enough evidence yet to justify charging the cricketers and others under the stringent Maharashtra Control of Organised Crime Act or MCOCA. The strict law is invoked against people associated with organised crime syndicates, a connection that has to be proved to invoke MCOCA.
The police, the court said, had not established that connection. The judge held that the cricketers were not even habitual offenders.
In court, the Delhi Police struggled today to justify seeking charges under MCOCA, which if accepted, would have made it tough for Sreesanth and the others to get bail.
They painstakingly detailed an alleged underworld connection to betting and spot-fixing in cricket, even reading out the transcript of what the cops claim is a phone conversation between don Dawood Ibrahim and alleged Pakistani bookie Javed Chotani discussing what seems like a property deal.
The police say they had intercepted later conversations between Chotani, also know as "Doctor" and alleged Indian bookies Tinku Mandi and Chotu Nagpur and claim that it was these phone chats that led them to stumble upon spot-fixing in the Indian Premier League.
The Delhi Police have named Dawood Ibrahim and his associate Chotta Shakeel as co-accused in the betting and spot fixing case that has rocked Indian cricket since last month. They have claimed that Dawood's gang runs illegal betting in India and the money generated is siphoned out through
hawala routes.
The Enforcement Directorate has begun investigating the Hawala angle in the scandal.