Crime Branch Criminal Investigation (CB-CID) sleuths here Monday night arrested city-based hotelier Vikram Aggarwal in connection with the ongoing probe on IPL betting.
Vikram Aggarwal who owns a couple of luxury hotels - Radison Blu Hotel, Chennai City Centre on Ethiraj Salai and Hotel Fortune Select Palms on OMR - arrived at CB-CID headquarters at 10 am on Monday.
CB-CID sleuths who had established the links between the hotelier and city-based betting kingpin Kitty alias Uttam C Jain had planned an elaborate questionnaire with about 150 questions for interrogating Aggarwal.
At the end of the intense interrogationof about nine hours by the top brass of the CB-CID, the decision to arrest the hotelier was arrived at, the agnecy said.
CB-CID DSP Venkatraman told reporters that preliminary inquiry with Aggarwal had revealed that he was closely associated with Kitty in IPL betting. “Kitty was using the premises of Hotel Radisson Blu for running his gambling den in room no 724 when the IPL matches were in progress. Vikram was also a part of gambling. He had close financial dealings with Kitty. Further inquiries revealed that he was having good information about the pitch conditions and several other details regarding IPL matches. He had been making hundreds of calls using some mobile phones that are apparently of questionable ownership,” he said.
“Hence, CB-CID has taken a decision to arrest him and proceed as per the law,” he maintained.
Vikram Aggarwal, who is known as ‘Victor’ among the betting circles, came under the CB-CID scanner after Kitty’s call records established that Aggarwal spoke to Kitty through a mobile phone that he had obtained using the documents of his wife Vandana.
Scientific investigations proved that Aggarwal and Kitty were together at the former’s luxury hotel where they reportedly ran the betting den.
Subsequently, Vikram was summoned to appear before the agency on May 30 for interrogation to which he did not respond.
But, Aggarwal presented himself for the investigation of a separate IPL betting case that was being probed by the Mumbai Police on May 31.
Meanwhile, CB-CID officials stated that they would take all legal measures to bring Aggarwal for interrogation and also carried out exhaustive search at the hotels owned by Aggarwal where they seized guest registers and the CCTV footages recorded by the security cameras.
The CB-CID issued fresh summons to Aggarwal after his wife requested for more time for her husband to appear before the agency for interrogation.
The new summons was served on Vikram seeking him to appear before CB-CID on Monday.