CBI digging into player-underworld nexus, says Raghavan

Director of the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), RK Raghavan told reporters in New Delhi on Tuesday that the agency was probing deeper into the unseemly nexus between cricketers and the underworld mafia. "We are going deep into the nexus the underworld has with cricket players and administrators. The nexus has been unearthed but the dimensions are yet to be fully understood," Raghavan told Press Trust of India.

Raghavan was careful not to name anyone but said the CBI's inquiry had established the underworld connections of "a few Indian players". The depositions of Azharuddin and ex-physio Ali Irani offer stark glimpses of the underworld's involvement in the game. Azharuddin stated during his interrogation that Abu Salem had rung him up on a couple of occasions and requested him to fix some matches but he had refused while Irani revealed that Azharuddin had told him once that as he was doing matches for Anees Ibrahim, brother of Dawood, he could not do business, as it were, with anyone else.

The CBI Director added that detectives from the agency were travelling to Dubai and other parts of the Middle East to uncover conclusive evidence in this regard. Raghavan also noted that the CBI report had clearly warned that if the authorities continued to turn a blind eye, the underworld could extend its tentacles further and 'turn wagering into an organised racket' over which it exercised full control.

Raghavan was emphatic in his assertion that the CBI inquiry into the match-fixing scandal did not end with the report presented to the Government on November 1. Indeed he refused to rule out the possibility of a supplementary report being drafted. "Our enquiry is alive. If circumstances warrant we will come out with another report. We are already going beyond the report we have submitted," he said.

He observed that apart from the national security implications of the scandal, the gambling racket was also an instrument by which the underworld indulged in money laundering. "There is no limit to the ingenuity of the underworld in laundering money," said Raghavan who recently attended an international conference on money laundering at Vancouver, according to PTI.

Raghavan also disclosed that the CBI was considering the possibility of prosecuting the two cricketers named in the report, Mohd. Azharuddin and Ajay Sharma, who are public servants. He pointed out that under Section 13 of the Prevention of Corruption Act, 'a public servant could be charged with criminal misconduct if he obtains for himself or any other person any pecuniary advantage by corrupt or illegal means', as reported by PTI. The 'pecuniary advantage' need not necessarily be through abuse of his own office.