A Delhi court on Thursday sent Sanjeev Chawla, an alleged bookie and key accused in one of cricket’s biggest match-fixing scandals that involved former South African captain Hansie Cronje, to 12-day police custody.
Additional chief metropolitan magistrate Sudhir Kumar Sirohi sent Chawla to 12-day custody after Delhi police sought his 14-day custodial interrogation.
Chawla was extradited from London on Thursday, sources in Delhi police said. The 50-year-old British national is a key accused in the match-fixing scandal in 2000. Cronje died in a plane crash two years after the scandal.
“Chawla’s extradition is the first high-profile extradition of its kind under the India-UK Extradition Treaty, signed in 1992. Chawla had earlier taken his appeal against the extradition right up to the European Court of Human Rights which rejected his application last week,” said a Delhi police official.
In July 2013, Delhi police had filed a chargesheet in the 2000 match-fixing case and named Cronje and five bookies . All of them had been charged under Section 420 (cheating) and 120 B (criminal conspiracy), which attracts seven years maximum punishment.