Cronje can be sentenced to 14 yrs under IPC

Adds a senior official of the Ministry of Law, requesting anonymity: “Gambling or match-fixing, any act within human conduct, with criminal intention would come under Section 120 B. There is no need for any other special law for match-fixing.”

But while the legal provisions are clear, there is a network of investigating agencies already probing the case. As far as Delhi Police is concerned, it filed its FIR on April 6 under the IPC’s sections 420 and 120 B for cheating and Section 34 for common intention. If the charges are proved then the punishment would be seven years for Cronje and the Indian bookies Sanjeev Chawla and Rajesh Kalra. They would probably then have to be housed in the high-security Tihar Jail.

The FIR says the cheating was done against the interests of “the common man and what has been said as a fair game was not a fair game.” The FIR curiously states that Delhi Police “stumbled upon the conversation”.

But the tapes will not be evidence enough to indict those named in the FIR and, therefore, legal experts say Delhi Police will have to produce a lot of corroborative evidence to clinch the conspiracy angle of the case. Delhi Police officials say there is corroborative evidence aplenty: in the form of meetings and telephone calls between the accused, their having meals and even visiting the same health clubs.

But officials feel it is only a matter of time before the investigations are handed over formally to the CBI due to the international ramifications of the case. The CBI is yet to receive any formal intimation. Once that happens, they will first have to ascertain whether the tapes are authentic or not before they can file a chargesheet using the Delhi Police FIR as the locus standi.

Says an SP in the agency: “The CBI will have to issue letter rogatories if they want to investigate the case abroad. Investigations in South Africa and London will have to be conducted and the CBI is the only agency which can handle this.”

The Interpol division of the CBI, however, was one of the first to be roped into the investigations. The Interpol has reportedly received a long list of requests from Delhi Police which includes a request for an authenticated voice sample of Cronje (in normal, healthy conditions) and maybe that of Sanjeev Chawla as well. Telephone numbers of the suspected kingpin living in South Africa, with whom both Kalra and Chawla have been in touch, have also been passed onto the Interpol.

Besides this, the Enforcement Directorate (ED) will look into the alleged hawala transactions of the case. The ED today got two days of custodial remand of Rajesh Kalra and will be questioning him on the hawala angle.

The question is: will Cronje appear in the dock in India? India does not have an extradition treaty with South Africa; so even though he faces serious charges of criminal conspiracy and cheating, he cannot be arrested by the Indian authorities. “He would first have to be brought to a country with which we have an extradition treaty and then arrested if the charges are proved right,” says an official of the Ministry of External Affairs. This would be a case of a red-corner notice, usually issued by the Interpol, where a person can be arrested anywhere outside the country with whom we do not have an extradition treaty.