CBI expects more denials

Onkar Singh

With Nayan Mongia and Ram Adhar alias Chaudhary joining hands with Manoj Prabhakar and Ajay Jadeja in slamming the CBI report on match-fixing, the investigating agency expects similar responses from the others named in the report as well.

"We are not surprised at all that the people have now gone on a denying spree. If they did not tell us anything, and if Mukesh Gupta's father also claims that his son did not say anything about the players and the fixing of matches, someone of us must have got a brilliant brainwave to say what we have said in our report," said a senior official of the CBI on Monday.

"Nayan Mongia says that he did not play the two matches -- at Rajkot (October 29, 1996), against South Africa, and the Jaipur match (March 24, 1999), against Pakistan. Then who scored the runs for him in the two matches, as shown in the score sheet.

"In the Titan Cup match at Rajkot, Mongia scored 3 runs and was caught and bowled by Nicky Boje. In the Pepsi Cup match at Jaipur, Mongia scored 11 runs in 54 balls and was stumped by Moin Khan and bowled by Arshad Khan according to the score sheet. So this should nail Mongia's claims," the official added.

Talking about the claims made by Ram Adhar alias Chaudhary, the groundsman of the Delhi and District Cricket Association, CBI sources pointed out that they were not aware of the existence of Ram Adhar till he came and told them he was also known as Chaudhary though his real name was Ram Adhar.

"He is a groundsman and we were not even looking for him. He has already confirmed to the media that he had indeed gone to Rajghat to meet Ajay Sharma and one other man. He did not know that the man who gave him money through Sharma was Mukesh Gupta. Ram Adhar was examined on 8.8.2000. What was he doing in last two-and-a-half months? He was not even the focus of our investigations till Ajay Sharma told us that he had fixed even the pitch through Ram Adhar," the source said.

Ram Adhar has said that the CBI had forced him to give a statement that he was paid Rs 50,000 by Ajay Sharma for preparing a favourable pitch for Indian spinners for a match against Australia. The Indian team won the Test in three-and-a-half days.

Meanwhile, top officials of the CBI are now gathering information on the telephone conversations of Ajay Jadeja. Jadeja has claimed that the agency said that he received phone calls on his cell phone both before and after the match at Guwahati and Jamshedpur despite the fact that Airtel did not have link facilities in these two cities.

"The match in Guwahati was played on 14.11.1999. While the whole team reached Guwahati on 12.11.1999, Jadeja did not join the team till the 13th afternoon. The last call he made or received to Uttam Chand, a bookie, was just before he took the flight from Delhi at nine in the morning of 13.11.1999. An hour after the team landed in Delhi on 15.11.1999 around 3 pm, he received another call on his cell. We have checked and rechecked our records, and print-outs of Uttam Chand and Jadeja's phone numbers. There is no cause for worry," the sources said.

They also informed that Jadeja was first called by the agency on 16.7.2000. During the meeting, they said, the agency recorded his statement, during which he spoke about knowing alleged bookies Rajesh Kalra, Kishen Kumar and several others, but did not mention a word about his links with Uttam Chand until the agency confronted him with documents on his second visit to the CBI headquarters later on. It was only after he was shown the print-outs of Uttam Chand's phone numbers that he admitted knowing the bookie.

But Jadeja says that he did not fix matches?

"This is not true. Why should Azhar say that he fixed matches with Nayan Mongia and Jadeja, knowing fully well that he was also implicating himself. Azhar had admitted to fixing three matches in all in his statement before the CBI. These are the Titan Cup match in Rajkot 1996, Asia Cup match in 1997 and Pepsi Cup match in 1999," the sources explained.

An officer rebutted the charge levelled by the father of Mukesh Gupta, that his son was abducted by the agency and kept in custody.

"When Mukesh Gupta landed at the CBI headquarters on 28.6.2000 we did not know that he was coming. He came when we were packing to go home. He was a difficult customer and did not give any information on the first day. But when he was shown print-outs of the players' cell phones, he decided to come clean. Getting specific information was all the more difficult. He only told us where he lost the money but he did not talk about where he made money. When we showed him Mukesh Gupta records of Hotel Landmark, where he had stayed under his own name in 1996, when he met Hansie Cronje, he knew we meant business. He admitted that he gave $90,000 to Hansie Cronje in two instalments of $40,000 and 50,000 respectively.

"He also said he gave $40,000 to Lara, 20,000 each to Mark Waugh and Martin Crowe, $15,000 to DeSilva and five thousand pounds to Alec Stewart. This money itself runs into crores of rupees," he said.

"It was the same thing for Jadeja," he added. "He wanted to answer only those questions which he wanted us to ask. But he did not want to answer the ones which we were asking him. Since we were dealing with some of the biggest names in Indian cricket therefore we had to investigate the matter with our hands tied behind our backs."

The agency is now waiting a report from the income tax department to proceed against the tainted players. The agency has also written to the Directorate of Enforcement to look into the match-fixing report as a majority of the transactions are hawala transactions.

The ED has already started investigating the case against Mukesh Gupta.

Sports Minister Sukhdev Singh Dhindsa, besides sending the CBI report to the Ministry of Home and Law, also sent a copy to the Ministry of Finance for its views on the hawala dealings.

The complete coverage

Mail Cricket Editor