No D-Company direct evidence

Commenting on the Supreme Court appointed IPL probe panel’s criticism of the Mumbai police for failing to probe the “Dawood angle” in the IPL match-fixing and betting scandal, the police said that it was not viable since they did not come across any direct evidence that could be traced back to the fugitive gangster or his henchmen.

“We can only investigate a Dawood angle if we find a connecting link between the bookies here and their Pakistani counterparts that could end at Dawood. It has become a fashion to immediately announce and speculate a Dawood hand in any crime that has a Pakistan connection. However, even though we are not ruling out Dawood’s involvement, he is too smart to leave loose ends that could be easily traced back to him,” said a crime branch officer who had been a part of the investigating team.
Explaining what qualifies a “link” in an investigation, a crime branch officer said, “Bookie Ramesh Vyas relayed calls between bookies here and in Pakistan through a teleconferencing facility on his cellphone so as not to reveal the Pakistani counterparts’ cellphone numbers. This was the only Pakistan link. However, none of their interrogations or cellphone conversation transcripts link the scam to Dawood or his henchmen like Chhota Shakeel.”
Only then we could say with certainty that there is a D-gang involvement.”
Despite repeated attempts, joint CP (crime) Himanshu Roy and additional CP Niket Kaushik could not be reached for comments.
The SC-appointed panel has said that gangsters Dawood Ibrahim and Chhota Shakeel are the “prime movers” behind the syndicate, which is running betting across the country. “The integration of the markets along with streamlining of money transfers through hawala transactions and certainty of settlements by muscle power opened up a huge avenue of making windfall gains for this syndicate. This led to an amalgamation of multiple sub-conspiracies,” the report said.
The panel has come down heavily on the Mumbai police for “not willing” to investigate Dawood’s involvement in it and for protecting “lots of persons” involved in the betting syndicate.