Team boss lost a crore on bets: Vindu

S Ahmed Ali TNN

Mumbai: Dara Singh’s son Vindu Dara Singh, arrested on Wednesday for his alleged involvement in the IPL fixing scandal, has told the crime branch of Mumbai police that an IPL team boss, who’s been in the news lately, lost a khoka (Rs 1 crore) in bets placed through him on IPL matches this season.
    The veracity of Vindu’s claim is yet to be established. If this is indeed a fact, the team boss cannot claim that his connections with Vindu are purely friendly and have nothing to do with betting or fixing. The police are considering
a couple of scenarios: One, that the team boss placed bets through Vindu on IPL matches in general and not on his own team which, while being illegal, would not be an outright criminal act; Two, that he passed on information about his own team to Vindu, who then placed bets on his behalf with bookies on the basis of that information (the same way corporate executives can play the stock market with insider information). He could still lose money because the information may not necessarily guarantee the final outcome.
    Both these scenarios involve betting and not fixing. Whether any fixing was also involved is not yet known.
‘I was close to Bhajji, Virat’
Mumbai: Vindu Dara Singh has told Mumbai police that he knew several cricket players but was close to Virat Kohli, Harbhajan Singh, and Manpreet Gony, reports S Ahmed Ali. Kohli plays for RCB, Harbhajan for Mumbai Indians and Gony for Kings XI.Gony represented India in ODIs while he was with CSK in 2008. Police said they are yet to come across anything linking the trio to Vindu’s betting racket.
    Vindu also revealed the names of Bollywood celebrities who placed bets through him. He said he came in contact with the betting syndicate through a friend, Anand Saxena, who introduced him to bookies Ramesh Vyas and Shobhan Mehta. He got to know Sreesanth through Ajit Chandila and some Delhi bookies.