New Delhi, May 17
More players, including two foereign cricketers, have come under the scanner of the Delhi Police in connection with the Indian Premier League (IPL) spot-fixing scam even as six bookies were held in Tamil Nadu in connection with another IPL betting racket.

The police claimed that Indian pacer Sreesanth and Ankeet Chavan — two of the three arrested Rajasthan Royal (RR) players — have "confessed" to the spot-fixing charge but the lawyers of the two cricketers denied their involvement.

The role of more players whose names cropped up during the interrogation of arrested cricketers and bookies scandal could be probed, the Delhi Police said.

A Delhi Police officer, involved in the investigation, said, “We also cannot rule out the possibility of the involvement of other IPL teams in the scam.”

The police is also likely to probe some more IPL matches in the current season even as Sreesanth, Chavan and Ajit Chandila — also a RR player — along with 11 other arrested bookies were subjected to interrogation by its special cell. Asked whether women were used to trap or lure players in the spot-fixing racket, sources replied in the affirmative.

It has also emerged that the arrested bookies tried to lure three players, including two foreigners, with the help of Chandila, to be part of the spot-fixing racket. Three bookies, Chandresh Patel alias Chand, Manan and Amit Kumar, had met Chandila at the Country Club in Gurgaon on April 6, said police sources. The players — Brad Hodge, Kevon Cooper and Siddharth Trivedi —, however, spurned their invite to join a party at Jaipur for clinching the deal, sources said. Police sources said Chandila had purportedly told a bookie that he was involved in spot-fixing during the previous IPL season too.

Sources said Sreeshant, Chavan and Amit Singh, a cricketer-turned-bookie, broke into tears when they were being grilled by the police.

As investigators in Delhi went into the bottom of the spot-fixing scandal that has sparked an outrage, the Tamil Nadu Police claimed to have busted a separate betting racket relating to IPL matches with the arrest of six bookies in Chennai and recovered Rs 14 lakh in cash. The suspected mastermind was operating from Delhi, said the police. The arrests followed searches at 13 locations in Chennai based on a tip-off.

Sreesanth's lawyer insisted his client was "totally innocent." "Sreesanth has been falsely or mistakenly arrested. They (Delhi Police) have got some wrong information or mistakenly arrested him," Deepak Prakash told reporters. Sreesanth and the other two cricketers were arrested in a post-midnight operation in Mumbai yesterday by the Delhi Police for spot-fixing IPL matches for payments of up to Rs 60 lakh just for giving away pre-determined number of runs in an over. Rajiv Shankar Dwivedi, the lawyer who appeared for Chandila and Chauhan, claimed that they were completely innocent.

During interrogation in Delhi, Sreesanth pinned the blame on Jiju, his ‘friend’ and a club-level player from Kerala whose matches were attended by the Indian pacer regularly, while Chavan said Chandila was responsible. The investigators said some of the previous matches were also being examined by the Delhi Police as the arrested accused have indicated that they too had been fixed at the instance of bookies.

BCCI suspends Amit Singh

The BCCI will meet on Sunday in the wake of the IPL spot-fixing scandal. The Board said on Friday that it had suspended Gujarat medium pacer Amit Singh who, during his stint with Rajasthan Royals, was allegedly used by the bookies to fix deals with cricketers