CBI looks into transcripts available on website

Tarun Tejpal, managing director of the website which broke the news about the secret interviews, said he would soon be handing over all the evidence including the 40-odd hours secret shooting of interviews with players and officials.

“We will soon be handing over the tapes and all other physical evidence to the CBI,” Tejpal said.

CBI sources said the tapes would be sent to the legal cell of the agency to see how well these tapes could help in the probe and stand scrutiny of a court of law. Under the Indian Evidence Act of 1947, a taped conversion is only a circumstancial evidence and has to be corraborated by the concerned person, who has been interviewed, the sources said.

Meanwhile, the agency was futher probing the role of a former Indian cricketer, who is at present abroad. The name of former Delhi batsman had surfaced during the investigations into the case.

Referring to the deposition of Prabhakar before the agency, the sources said the agency was probing all aspects. A statement without proof hardly mattered before the investigating agency.

Speculation was rife in the CBI headquarters that the PE, registered on May 2 into the scandal, might be closed in the absence of any evidence, the sources said. In another development, the CBI was contemplating filing another case in the match-fixing scandal to probe alleged bunglings in the allotment of rights to telecast cricket matches, the sources said.

The sources said some documents were being examined by the Anti-Corruption Unit of the agency and soon a Preliminary Enquiry (PE) would be registered to probe the allegations.

Lawyers sceptical
NEW DELHI: The secretly taped conversations of the who’s who in Indian cricket by Prabhakar relating to match-fixing scandal may have created ripples in enthusiasts of the game but many lawyers remain unimpressed both on its legal as well as circumstantial value.

“It is a public tamasha….. entertainment of an ignorant public by the press,” said lawyer PN Lekhi dismissing the entire tape-recorded conversations. He said this evidence did not give even a single ingredient provided in Indian Penal Code to constitute an offence.

Senior advocate Rajiv Dhawan was more critical. “It is a piece of evidence that is heresay upon audio tape,” he said and added tape-recorded evidence had to be contemporaneous, authentic and untampered to be admissible as secondary evidence in Indian courts.

“There is no question of the tapes being contemporaneousas they are recorded six years after the actual event,” he said. The biggest drawback of these tapes was the “usne kahatha” factor, he said referring to the third party conversation remebering the allegations made by Prabhakar.Bhushan said the persons who spoke to Prabhakar unaware of the secret camera could be called by the court, once CBI files chargesheet, and be asked to give evidence.

“These persons will be under tremendous public pressure to stand by their statements made on tape,” he said but feared CBI might try to do a whitewash of the entire case as many big-wigs were suspected to be involved in the scandal.

He said Prabhakar has done an admirable job and it was now for CBI to show its mettle by unmasking the bigger players in the scandal to restore the game to its old stature. Dhawan is not so impressed with the work of Prabhakar and feels the gutsy medium pacer of last decade may be open to civil action as others may claim he had intruded into their privacy and confidentiality.

“People cannot go around in private with cameras hidden on them,” he said but conceeded that “Indian Courts follow the Commonwealth pattern making illegally obtained evidence as admissible unlike in USA.”

Prabhakar’s counsel was the most confident of all. Nidesh Gupta said the Supreme Court right from the advent of audio-taperecorders had regarded the taped conversations as evidence with certain safeguards on its authenticity. “In the present case, not only the conversation is taped, the person making the statement is also on camera which enhances the scope of its admissibility in a court of law,” Gupta said. Gupta said Prabhakar was planning to go to CBI and give them the entire recorded material which runs to 48 hours. “There are more revealing things in the 48-hour recorded conversation. The media was shown only a tape having a recording of one and half hours long,” he said.

Asked what the future course of action would be, Gupta said it was for CBI to go into the specific instances mentioned by various people regarding match-fixing and find the persons involved in it. “Several specific instances have been mentioned by different people which stand corroborated by various other pieces of evidence including actual occurrences during the course of said matches,” Prabhakar’s counsel said. King Commission for IndiaCALCUTTA: Some members of the South African Commission of Inquiry probing match fixing allegations against former skipper Hansie Cronje are likely to visit India in connection with the investigation, the country’s High Commissioner in India, Maite Nkoana-Mashabane, indicated.

“Some members of the King Commission may visit India as and when the need arises,” Mashabane told newspersons when asked whether the members of the commission had plans to come to India.

The five-member commission, headed by retired South African judge Edwin King, would submit its report by the end of next month.

Asked whether her country’s government would send Cronje to India if requested by the CBI, Mashabane evaded a direct reply, saying, “We have not yet received any such request. Let the request come.”