New Delhi: Thirteenyears after the match fixing scandal involving Hansie Cronje rocked the cricket world, Delhi Police filed a chargesheet in a court here on Monday naming the former South African captain and five others, including Kishan Kumar- brother of T-Series founder Gulshan Kumar.
The chargesheet was filed before link magistrate Akash Jain as Chief Metropolitan Magistrate (CMM) Amit Bansal was on leave.
The 90-page charge sheet will come up for consideration on Tuesday before CMM Bansal.
Police have named Cronje, who was killed in a plane crash in 2002, in column two of the chargesheet – which lists the accused who are dead or against whom proceedings are abated.
London-based bookie Sanjeev Chawla, bookie Manmohan Khattar, T-Series founder Gulshan Kumar’s brother Kishan Kumar, Delhi-based bookie Rajesh Kalra and Sunil Dara alias Bittoo have also been named as accused.
No other cricketer has been named in the chargesheet.
According to police sources, the charge sheet is mostly based on King’s Commission report, confession of Hansie Cronje and telephonic intercepts.
They said Chawla and Khattar are hiding in the UK and the US respectively.
Police will issue red corner notices against them and begin the process of their extradition after filing the chargesheet, they said.
It was in April 2000 that the Crime Branch of Delhi Police had stumbled upon the match fixing scandal when they intercepted calls of a London-based bookie.
In May this year, during the investigation in the spot-fixing case in which police have arrested 29 people including three cricket players – S Sreesanth, Ankeet Chavan and Ajit Chandila – the attention of the investigators was drawn to a pending case in which Cronje and others were named.
“The first Test match at Mumbai and the first one-day internationals at Cochin were fixed and the same resulted in wrongful gain to the accused and wrongful loss in general to the public at large who had gone believing that they would witness a truly competitive matches in which each player would perform optimally. “
The accused persons have thus committed the offences punishable under sections 420 (cheating)/120-B (criminal conspiracy) of the IPC,” the chargesheet said.
It said the matches were fixed during the series held here between India and South Africa during February-March 2000.
The police said an extortion case was lodged on November 13, 1999 by businessman Rama Kant Gupta who had alleged that he had received a threatening call from Shaheen Haithely from Dubai and the investigation into the case led them to the match fixing scandal.
It said that surveillance and interception of calls led to cracking of the case and it was revealed during the probe that Kishan Kumar was in touch with Shaheen.
The police, in its charge sheet, said that between March 8, 2000 to March 19, 2000, “it was revealed that accused persons were conspiring to fix the matches in connivance with Cronje”.
Regarding Sanjeev Chawla, it said he was in constant touch with Cronje and had also stayed in the same hotels at the same time where the teams were staying during their visit in India for the cricket series.
The police, in its charge sheet, which also contains 67 sets of documents, said that as per the statements recorded before the Kings Commission, a fixed match was called “color” while the person who accepts bet was called “bookie” and the person who had placed the bet was called “punter”. It said Chawla had gone to London from India on March 15, 2000 and never came back and he was operating from the United Kingdom. (PTI)