Shantakumaran Sreesanth’s world falling apart

Dubai: Shantakumaran Sreesanth’s fate seems to be already sealed, with police set to produce more evidence against the pacer after raiding the hotel room in which he stayed away from his teammates.

Like the Dubai’s Kerala Premier League (KPL), which is set to remove Sreesanth as their brand ambassador, many sponsors have withdrawn advertisements featuring him.

A water-purifier company which he represents has withdrawn all its advertisements, while in his home state of Kerala, the government has asked to withdraw the Kerala Lottery advertisement involving him. Supertech Cement, Nissan and Tata Consultancy Services are waiting for the investigation to be completed before calling off Sreesanth’s sponsorship. Sreesanth was also set to have a cameo in a Hindi movie which is now in doubt.

Bharat Petroleum Corporation Limited (BPCL), with whom Sreesanth is employed, may also suspend him. Sreesanth is employed as assistant manager in their marketing division and the company has sought the police report before taking a decision.

Himanshu Roy, Joint Commissioner of Police in Mumbai, who headed the raid on Sreesanth’s Mumbai hotel room, said: “We received information that Sreesanth had independently booked himself into a five-star hotel. We have reason to believe Sreesanth and Jiju Janardhanan checked into the hotel late in the night on May 13.

“We are recreating their movements on May 14 and 15. We are also in the process of obtaining CCTV feed to understand who were their visitors, what were his movements. We have obtained the permission to take a mirror image of the laptops and phones so that we can begin the process of analysing these gadgets to further aid our investigation.”

Sreesanth is being held in custody in Delhi and during questioning he reportedly broke down in tears. Though he was offered food, he had refused to eat and also refused to change his dress, spending the whole night after his arrest in blue jeans and a black T-shirt.

Meanwhile, police are understood to have collected conversations between Janardhanan and a bookmaker, in which Sreesanth reportedly sought an advance of 50 per cent of the amount before the match to give away the agreed number of runs.

Two days before the scandal broke, Sreesanth had told a newspaper that he was planning to get married in September to a non-Keralite. A shattered Sreesanth is likely to receive a life ban from the BCCI too.