New Delhi, October 5: Names of at least four Indian players were likely to figure in the CBI’s interim report, whose submission has been delayed again and is likely to be handed over to the Union Sports Ministry later this month.
Highly-placed sources said the agency’s legal department had okayed the report on the match-fixing scandal and the officials were busy giving final touches to it.
The sources said names of at least four Indian cricket players were likely to be included in the report against whom some evidence had been
Declining to name the players, the sources said the agency had some problem in nailing cricket players as they did not fall under the purveiw of Prevention of Corruption act of Indian Penal Code.
CBI Director RK Raghavan had earlier hinted that some names would be there in the report.
Besides this, the sources said the reports would contain some suggestions for improving the functioning of Indian Cricket Board to guard against match-fixing in the future.
The sources said the report was likely going to suggest making mandatory a code for all players to declare all gifts received from abroad.
The report, which contains statements of at least 200 people including top cricket players, administrators and bookies, is likely to highlight certain instances when matches were fixed, pitches at the playgrounds were doctored and last minute changes were made in the team at the instances of bookies.
The sources denied some media reports that names of some foreign players would be included in the report.
The sleuths have had some `hearsay’ reference to some foreign players but the agency has no jurisdiction to question them.
Meanwhile, the agency has rejected the suggestion of the former all-rounder Manoj Prabhakar to call other players for a lie-detector test along with him.
The lie detector test was suggested only for Prabhakar as almost all the persons named by him as witnesses to Kapil Dev’s alleged offer of Rs. 25 lakh to him for underperforming in a One-Dayer against Pakistan in 1994, had not corroborated his statement.
Prabhakar was re-examined by the CBI three times in the wake of denial by players and Board officials of their alleged secret conversations shot on video by him. The CBI examined Nayan Mongia, Navjot Singh Sidhu, Prashant Vaidya, Ajit Wadekar and Ali Irani in this connection and all of them denied having any knowledge about the alleged offer.
CBI has so far recorded statements of 16 cricket-related persons including Kapil Dev, BCCI President AC Muthiah, Secretary Jaywant Lele, treasurer Kishore Rungta, Delhi Cricket Association Secretary Sunil Dev, former BCCI President IS Bindra, Ajit Wadekar, cricketers Manoj Prabhakar, Mohammed Azharuddin, Navjot Sidhu, Nayan Mongia, Ajay Jadeja, Prashant Vaidya and Nikhil Chopra besides some alleged bookies including Mukesh Gupta.
The agency officials also met batting mastreo Sachin Tendulkar at Mumbai and asked him certain questions about his views on the match-fixing controversy.