IPL betting: Discharge plea of suspended IPS officer dismissed
The suspended police officer was charged under sections of the Prevention of Corruption Act by the CB-CID.
Chennai: The special court for cases under the Prevention of Corruption Act, Chennai, has dismissed a discharge petition filed by a suspended IPS officer G. Sampath Kumar, 50, who allegedly collected bribe to cover up a few accused in the sensational IPL betting scam.
The CB-CID registered a case against suspended IPS officer Sampath Kumar on charges of allegedly collecting bribe to let off some of the persons involved in the sensational Indian Premier League (IPL) bookies scam. The chargesheet was also filed in the XI metropolitan magistrate court in 2015 against Sampath Kumar, bookie Mahendra Singh Ranka and two others. The suspended police officer was charged under sections of the Prevention of Corruption Act by the CB-CID.
According to prosecution Sampath Kumar, the then SP in the 'Q' branch of the Tamil Nadu police, was the whistleblower of IPL betting and he was one among investigators who unearthed the scam in 2013. The trail, which began with investigations by the Delhi police, subsequently led to Chennai wherein names of several prominent cricketers and then BCCI president, N. Srinivasan's son-in-law, Gurunath Meiyappan, surfaced in the scam.
However, the CB-CID, which took over the case from Sampath Kumar, alleged that the officer, during his tenure as investigating officer, collected bribe from a few bookies to hold back the involvement of a few persons in the scam.
He was placed under suspension in February 2014. The officer had denied the charges claiming he only took a loan from one of the bookies and he was being targeted for trying to expose CB-CID's biased probe.
In the present petition, he sought to discharge him from the case registered under Prevention of Corruption Act. He said the investigating authorities had not placed call detail records before the sanctioning authority. As per the CDR details, there was nothing to establish that there was communication with the accused. The prosecution suppressed the CDR details before the sanctioning authority.
Hence, the sanction was not valid.Vehemently opposing contention, the prosecution said that his first discharge petition was dismissed by the court on May 19, 2017, holding that a prima facie case made out against him and there was a ground for presuming that the accused committed the offence.