June 4: Gurunath Meiyappan walked free on bail today but S. Sreesanth and his two tainted teammates are staring at an indefinite period in custody after Delhi police invoked a stringent law to curb organised crime against them.

Gurunath, the son-in-law of BCCI president and Chennai Super Kings owner N. Srinivasan, was granted bail by a Mumbai court on a bond of Rs 25,000. Vindoo Dara Singh and six other bookies were also freed.

The court set the condition that they should not travel outside the country and should report to the crime branch every alternate day.

But Sreesanth and his Rajasthan Royals team-mates Ankeet Chavan, who got married on Sunday, and Ajit Chandila have no such luck.

Delhi police today invoked the dreaded MCOCA (Maharashtra Control of Organised Crime Act) against the three cricketers accused of spot-fixing and named India’s most wanted underworld don Dawood Ibrahim and his close aide Chhota Shakeel as the prime accused in the case.

The stringent provisions of sections III and IV of the act as invoked by Delhi police not only entail life imprisonment but also attachment of properties accumulated through ill-gotten money.

“We have got evidence that Dawood Ibrahim and Chhota Shakeel were the masterminds in this entire fixing syndicate,” said a senior police official, adding that sections III and IV of MCOCA have been invoked against the 26 accused arrested in the fixing scandal.

Charges under MCOCA are non-bailable and police can get custody of the accused up to 30 days.

Besides, the provisions provide for any confession made in front of the deputy commissioner of police in Delhi or the superintendent in any other state to be acceptable as evidence in court.

“We have already informed the court about the MCOCA charges against all the accused as they were allegedly facilitating the illegal acts of underworld don Dawood Ibrahim and his aide Chhota Shakeel,” the official said.

Chief metropolitan magistrate Lokesh Kumar Sharma today extended judicial custody of Sreesanth and 22 others in the case after police informed it has invoked the provisions of MCOCA.

Ankeet Chavan and Sreesanth’s friend Abhishek Shukla are out on bail and co-accused Ashwani Aggarwal has been sent to Mumbai on a production warrant issued by a court there.

MCOCA enables the police to seek further custodial interrogation of accused to unearth the organised syndicate in the case.

Rebecca John, counsel for Sreesanth, alleged that the dreaded act was invoked only to deny her client bail.

During the probe, police sources claimed, they gathered enough evidence to suggest that the entire fixing scandal was operated by an organised crime syndicate that had members from the underworld to bookies and players acting in tandem.

“In this case, force and threat besides coercion is used against players. One of the arrested bookies threatened a player, saying he will teach him a lesson once he comes to Mumbai,” the official said, justifying the slapping of MCOCA charges.

“The accused have made lot of money and gained monetarily. It is fit to invoke the stringent law,” he added.