Virat Kohli not available for Railways tie; Rishabh Pant, Harshit Rana to play
Bengaluru (PTI): India superstar Virat Kohli will not feature in Delhi's fixture against Railways in the Vijay Hazare Trophy here on Tuesday, head coach Sarandeep Singh told PTI.
Kohli, who made 131 and 77 on his return to the premier domestic one-day competition, will soon rejoin the national team for the ODI series against New Zealand beginning on January 11.
However, pacer Harshit Rana and wicketkeeper-batter Rishabh Pant are available for selection for the game in Alur on Tuesday, said Sarandeep.
"Virat is not available. Pant and Harshit will be playing tomorrow," said the head coach and former India spinner.
DDCA president Rohan Jaitely had earlier indicated that Kohli would play three games.
Delhi currently lead Group D with four wins in five matches and a victory against Railways should be enough to advance in the tournament.
The first ODI between India and New Zealand will be played in Vadodara on January 11, followed by games in Rajkot and Indore on January 14 and 18 respectively.
Kohli, now a one format cricket, has been in stellar form of late and racked up two hundreds and an unbeaten 65 in the three-match home series against South Africa last month.
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Kerala: ED files money laundering case in Sabarimala gold loss case
Thiruvananthapuram/New Delhi (PTI): The Enforcement Directorate on Friday filed a money laundering case in the Sabarimala gold loss case in Kerala, official sources said.
The federal probe agency's Kochi zonal office has registered an Enforcement Case Information Report (ECIR), an ED equivalent of a police FIR, under various sections of the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA), they said.
The politically sensitive case is already being investigated by a state special investigation team (SIT) under the supervision of the Kerala High Court.
In December, the high court had allowed the ED to undertake an independent investigation into the case after it dismissed objections raised by the SIT against sharing the case information with the central agency.
The SIT is probing two cases related to the gold loss incident and has arrested 11 people so far. The latest to be arrested by the SIT was Kandararu Rajeevaru, the chief priest of the Lord Ayyappa temple.
The other prominent persons arrested in the case by the SIT are Bengaluru-based businessman and prime accused Unnikrishnan Potty and former Travancore Devaswom Board president A Padmakumar.
The ED is expected to soon look for more evidence, question the accused, and it may also go on to attach certain assets of those involved if it finds that they generated "proceeds of crime", according to the officials.
The probe is related to a series of irregularities, including official misconduct, administrative lapses and a criminal conspiracy to misappropriate the gold from the various artefacts of the Lord Ayyappa shrine.
The investigation by the SIT, and now by the ED, is related to the loss of gold from the gold-cladded copper plates of the Dwarapalaka (guardian deity) idols and the door frames of the Sreekovil (sanctum sanctorum) of the temple.
The SIT has informed the High Court that its probe found "a series of serious official misconduct and administrative lapses on the part of the Devaswom officials right from the initial correspondence till the handing over of the door frame plates, connected plates, Dwarapalaka plates and pillar plates to Unnikrishnan Potty without proper authorisation".
It further said in its statement that Govardhan, Pankaj Bhandari, the CEO of Chennai-based Smart Creations, which carried out the electroplating of the artefacts from the temple, Potty and the other accused hatched a criminal conspiracy with malicious intention to misappropriate the gold cladded on the copper plates in and around the shrine.
"It is found during the investigation that all these criminal activities were part of a large conspiracy and an organised crime committed by the accused persons.
"They had a larger plan to dismantle other gold-clad items on the Sabarimala Sreekovil and to extract the gold from them for misappropriation," it said.
