Sanjiv Chawla, an alleged bookie and key accused in one of cricket’s biggest match-fixing scandals during South Africa’s tour of India in 2000, on Tuesday moved the Delhi high court against a lower court order sending him to police custody for 12 days.
Chawla has challenged Thursday’s order of Additional Chief Metropolitan Magistrate (ACMM) Sudhir Kumar Sirohi and sought that he should, instead, be remanded in judicial custody.
He submitted that the high court should declare his police custody as “wholly illegal and unlawful”.
He is facing charges of cheating and criminal conspiracy under the Indian Penal Code.
Delhi Police had requested the ACMM to grant 14 days custodial interrogation of Chawla, who was extradited from the UK to India on Thursday after then British Home Secretary Sajid Javid passed an order to this effect.
The police told Sirohi that Chawla had to be taken to various places to unearth a larger conspiracy.
The alleged bookie is alleged to have played a central role in conspiring with late South African captain Hansie Cronje to fix the South African tour of India in February-March 2000.
Chawla is a Delhi-born businessman who moved to the UK on a business visa in 1996, but continued to make trips to India.
After his Indian passport was revoked in 2000, Chawla was granted indefinite leave to remain in the UK in 2003. He obtained a British passport in 2005.