CBI to reopen investigations
Onkar Singh in New Delhi
The Central Bureau of Investigation team, which last year submitted its report on investigations into match-fixing in cricket, is now planning to reopen its probe.
CBI Joint Director R N Sawani told rediff that the case was by no means closed. "We cannot rule out the possibility that the links between cricketers and the underworld will be probed in the second phase," Sawani said.
"If you go through our report and the deposition of some of those who had been interrogated by the agency, you will notice the names of Abu Salem and Anees Ibrahim cropping up," he pointed out.
The fact that the CBI will now be going after the cricketer-underworld nexus was also confirmed by Director R K Raghavan, who in a recent media interview said that the nexus between top players and the underworld would now be probed.
CBI sources indicate that the next round of investigations will be a longer, more in-depth affair. And the agency intends to give itself more teeth, by using powers that it normally harnesses during a criminal investigation. In other words, while the earlier probe was an ad hoc affair, the CBI in its second phase will treat the matter as a criminal case, and proceed accordingly.
"We will also be taking longer on this probe, a year or two," a senior CBI official said. "This probe will be more thorough, more in-depth and exhaustive than the first one, which was only meant to explore the existence of match-fixing in cricket."
This news will come as a rude shock to various players who had hoped that the affair was closed following the submission of the first CBI report.
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