5 Indian Premier Leagues games under the scanner for spot-fixing

IPL again under spot-fixing scanner

In a sensational development, five Indian Premier League (IPL) games of the current season are under Enforcement Directorate's (ED) scanner, for spot-fixing reported Mumbai Mirror newspaper. Two places were raided on Friday in Mumbai and one each in Delhi and Jaipur by the ED, and two IPL teams are also being investigated for the same.

These raids were conducted after conducting a month-long monitoring on players, team franchises and bookies.

"Five games is our conservative estimate. There may be more games where spot-fixing took place in this edition of IPL," said an ED official.

Officials raided two houses in Andheri and Borivali area of Mumbai, owned by an identified bookie named, Sukhwinder Sodhi, and also another in Ulhasnagar which is owned by Anil Jaisinghani. The raid was a part of pan-India operation; ED is keeping it tight by giving no room to any of the bookies through their informers.

A senior ED officer, who did not wish to be identified, told the newspaper that they are looking into Jaisinghani's links with officials of two IPL teams who provided him unmatched access to players, and information on team compositions and field conditions. He alleged that Jaisinghani's wife had flushed all his SIM cards and mobile phone in the lavatory, but later were sought by calling a local plumber to retrieve it from the lavatory’s pipeline.

Meanwhile, in Delhi and Jaipur's raid, Shibu Gangwal and Mukesh Sharma name bookies places were sealed. Mukesh used to help bookies open betting account on a UK website using proxy servers.

IPL is not new to match fixing allegations. In 2013 season, 3 players from Rajasthan Royals were found guilty of spot fixing. Since then ED has been keeping continuous surveillance on all the people involved in the game, on and off the field.