'Dubai' roads lead to Kolkata betsmen

KOLKATA: The Knight Riders are out of the playoff race but Kolkata has re-entered the IPL-6 arena as the code name of a notorious bookie believed to be the key operative, if not the mastermind, of the spot-fixing scandal that is now blowing up in the face of the showpiece cricket league.
A failed fixing plot in the Rajasthan Royals-KKR match on May 3 has brought the focus back on Junior Kolkata, the ringmaster of cricket betting rackets for nearly a decade.Junior's name had cropped up when an IPL betting racket was busted in Mumbai last year but the man himself evaded arrest. But city sleuths believe he still runs a well-organized betting network in Kolkata that they suspect is closely linked to the unraveling spot-fixing scandal and are dusting the files on him.
The interrogation of S Sreesanth, Ajit Chandila and Ankeet Chavan and 11 booki-es arrested by Delhi Police had on Friday revealed Sreesanth and Chandila were 'fixed' to give away 28 runs in two overs in the May 3 match, but the plot failed to materialize as both were left out of the playing eleven.
With a Delhi Police team set to arrive in the city, sleuths in the CID and Kolkata Police have once again turned their attention to betting syndicates operating in the city since the late 90s when the match-fixing scandal broke. "Names like Sunil Dubai and Debendra Kothari that we heard often come across during interrogation of city-based bookies, have come up in the current spot-fixing case, too," a detective department officer said.
Key among those names is Junior who, sources said, first entered the police files around a decade ago when he was arrested from Jyangra, a locality off VIP Road near Baguiati, where he operated a betting racket. There was no confirmation of Junior's arrest from the CID, but sources said he had shifted base to Mumbai subsequently and had last been arrested in 2011 but had got bail and is now absconding.