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Off
The Hook
The
CBI report exonerates the allrounder of match-fixing
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| Kapil
had no links with bookies |
Six months
ago he had wept like a child. Then he went ballistic with rage. All because
Manoj Prabhakar, the man who once shared a new ball with him for India,
had turned into a bitter foe. Today, tired and upset over the past, Kapil
Dev would not even open his lips, let alone smile.
The CBI's
match-fixing report has given him enough reasons to smile though. The
investigators focused on Prabhakar's allegation that Kapil had offered
him Rs 25 lakh to throw a match in the Singer Cup in Sri Lanka in 1994.
But after sifting through a gamut of information and testimonies of players,
the agency concluded that there was "no credible evidence" to
substantiate the charges. Besides, the match was washed out.
The CBI
also probed the possibility of Kapil's links with betting syndicates,
given rumours that the allrounder was prone to gambling. Nothing incriminating
was found. Besides, the Prabhakar tapes added little by way of evidence.
The investigators say they took a "hard look" at the tapes,
including the damaging allegations levelled by BCCI Secretary J.Y. Lele
and others against Kapil. The CBI report says there is no evidence to
show Kapil had deliberately not enforced the follow-on in the Test against
New Zealand at Ahmedabad last December.
Kapil's
cell phone and telephone records show that he had no links with any bookie.
The nearest Kapil came to interacting with one was at Chennai's Hotel
Adyar Park Sheraton where he shared a card table with a leading bookie,
Uttam Chand, some years ago. The CBI says that was the only interaction
Kapil had with the bookie.
But the
report is silent on how Kapil acquired his famous BMW 700 series during
the 1992 South African tour. It was alleged at that time that a bookie
had presented him the car.
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How
can Non-Performing Assets of companies be cleared? By recovering what
you can, writes INDIA TODAY Associate Editor V. Shankar Aiyar in
