New Delhi, Feb 21 (IANS): The CBI on Tuesday arrested former Enforcement Directorate official J.P. Singh and three others accused of taking bribes while probing a hawala case and IPL betting racket in 2015-16.

Besides Singh, a former Joint Director, the three arrested included Enforcement Directorate official Sanjay Kumar and two middlemen, Vimal Agarwal and Chandresh Patel.

They were arrested in a corruption case probed by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) since September 2015. It was registered on a directive of the Finance Ministry.

The CBI said Singh and other ED officials, while investigating a Surat hawala case and Indian Premier League (IPL) betting racket, allegedly took huge bribes from the accused.

"A huge bribe amount was allegedly taken by these officers as quid pro quo for various acts of omission and commission," CBI spokesperson R.K. Gaur said.

He said the arrested persons were now in CBI custody in Delhi and were booked under the Prevention of Corruption Act and for criminal conspiracy.

The case was registered against Singh, an Indian Revenue Service officer, when he was posted in Ahmedabad as a Joint Director in the ED while Sanjay Kumar was his subordinate then.

Earlier, the CBI arrested three bookies in the case as they were allegedly working as conduits for Singh.

The agency earlier produced some documents in the special court in Ahmedabad citing an Intelligence Bureau report that alleged that "Singh took money for not arresting certain accused".

Based on the IB report, the CBI named Mumbai-based bookies Vimal Agarwal and Sonu Jalan as conduits for Singh who collecting huge amounts of money from bookies and punters.

CBI sources said Jalan and Agarwal visited Delhi several times in 2015 and, with the help of another bookie J.K. Arora, contacted various bookies whose names figured in the IPL betting racket.

Jalan and Arora were arrested by the CBI last year but the court gave them bail when the agency failed to file a chargesheet on time.