Court pulls up police for flip flop in IPL scandal probe

NEW DELHI: Delhi Police was today pulled up by a court here for its flip flop in the handling of the IPL spot-fixing case and hiding the arrest of Abhishek Shukla, a friend of cricketer S Sreesanth, and termed it as a "bad practice".

The court was also anguished that Shukla, who was arrested this morning, was taken to Mumbai in connection with the probe without informing it and taking its permission.

Delhi Police had not disclosed the arrest of Shukla and it was only revealed when the judge put some questions to them.

The inspector, who was leading the team of policemen while seeking the custody of three co-accused Vikash Chowdhury, Nitin Jain and Vinod Sharma, spoke about the arrest of Shukla when the judge put a specific question whether any more arrest has been made or not.

Replying in affirmative, the inspector told Chief Metropolitan Magistrate Lokesh Kumar Sharma that they have arrested Shukla who has been taken to Mumbai.

The reply of the inspector angered the judge who questioned the investigators for flouting the law which required the court's permission to take the accused outside the national capital.

"How can you (police) take him (Shukla) to Mumbai without even producing him in the court and without taking his custody? If you failed to produce him in the court within 24 hours of his arrest i.e by 11 AM tomorrow, it would amount to violation of provisions of the CrPC," the judge said.

"Come prepared tomorrow with your answer if you will produce Shukla after 11 AM and face the consequences," the judge added.

Shukla had joined the probe on the intervening night of May 27 and 28 but he was not arrested. However, after he was allowed to leave the police station at 7 PM last evening, the police arrested him at 11 AM today.

The police had earlier told the court that immediately after the arrest of Sreesanth, Shukla had allegedly had cleaned the cricketer's hotel room in Mumbai.

It had said Shukla might have removed the electronic gadgets and data kept in the cricketer's room.

The police had also told the court that the bills of the parties thrown by Sreesanth were paid by Shukla as his (Shukla's) PAN card number was mentioned on the bills.

Delhi Police had yesterday suffered a jolt when the court had rejected its plea for two more days of custodial interrogation of Sreesanth to fill up the missing links.