Indian news round-up

The Delhi High Court on Saturday granted bail with stringent conditions to Kishen Kumar and Rajesh Kalra, accused in the match fixing case, after the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) expressed their inability to file chargesheets against them within the statutory period of 60 days.

Justice RS Sodhi, while imposing stringent conditions on the two, banned them from travelling to both South Africa and Britain. He said that there was no reason why the accused would have to be kept in remand since the Delhi police and the Enforcement Directorate (ED) had failed to file a chargesheet against the two within the statutory period.

The Court directed Kishen Kumar to furnish a personal bond of Rs five lakhs regarding the ED case and Rs two lakhs to the Delhi police case with a surety of the same amount in both the cases. Meanwhile the bond amount in the ED case against Kalra was reduced to Rs two lakhs.

The Asian Cricket Council's (ACC) Under-15 tournament has been rescheduled and is to be held from June 30 to July 10. The tournament was originally scheduled to take place from June 8 to 18. Apart from hosts Malaysia, India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Hong Kong and Thailand will participate in the competition.

The tournament dates had been deferred so as to give enough time for the participating countries to mobilise their teams. The tournament has been introduced in order to assist the non-Test playing nations to develope the game among its youth since it would create a broader base for the game in the respective countries.

The Indian team for the tournament was announced on June 3 by the Board of Control for Cricket in India after a preparatory camp in Pune. Subhash Dixit of Uttar Pradesh is to lead the side while Assam all-rounder Mirgen Talukdar is his deputy. The team is scheduled to leave for Malyasia on June 27 from Chennai.

Justice Basudev Panigrahi of the Calcutta High Court on Friday directed the magazine `India Today' to file an affidavit substantiating its reports involving ICC president Jagmohan Dalmiya. Earlier the court had also directed the London based Sunday Telegraph to submit a similar affidavit in connection with the defamation case filed by Dalmiya.

Dalmiya had filed defamation suits in the Calcutta High Court on May 18 against two Indian magazines Outlook and India Today for printing news items which were baseless and defamatory in nature for Dalmiya. Apart from this, the ICC chief had also filed a defamation suit against the Sunday Telegraph.

The Company Law Board (LB) has ordered former Indian captain Bishen Singh Bedi and six others to attach the original documents to their petition filed against the Delhi and District Cricket Association (DDCA) challenging the practice of proxy voting during the Association's elections in 1998-99.

The LB bench, comprising Justice AS Banerjee and CR Mehra asked Bedi and the other petitioners to submit the original list of DDCA signatories who had approved the filing of the case within the next date of hearing of the case.

The request came during the hearing of the application by the DDCA counsel SK Mittal who opposed Bedi's petition on the grounds that the filing of the case was not ratified by even 20 percent of the total members of the association.