ICC team leaves for Delhi to track down Mukesh Gupta

A two-member team of ICC's anti-corruption unit has left for New Delhi to track down bookmaker Mukesh Gupta and obtain a formal testimony from him. The team comprises Geff Rees and Alan Hawkins and is "expected to be in India for several days", a spokesman of ICC told PTI in London on Thursday.

Gupta has been served with an ultimatum to substantiate charges that he offered or paid nine non-Indian players money for information by July 1.

The deposition of Gupta, a key witness in the CBI probe on betting and match fixing in cricket, is crucial for substantiation of charges against international cricketers including England's stand-in skipper Alec Stewart and West Indies star batsman Brian Lara.

The ACU chief Sir Paul Condon had stated at a meeting of the game's governing body in London on Monday that Gupta had been given a deadline till July 1 to become an approver in the worst ever scandal to have rocked the sport.

If Gupta failed to cooperate, the charges that he paid money to Stewart, Lara and others for match related information, might be dropped, Condon had hinted.