MUMBAI, JULY 27: The road from cricket's first fallen god Hansie Cronje leads somewhere into the murky terrain of international drug trafficking mafia all the way to Dawood Ibrahim's D-company.Sources reveal that Dawood and his key associate based in Africa, Abu Salem, had used their African underworld connections to pressurise Cronje to reveal just that much and not more to the King Commission hearing the match-fixing scandal in Johannesburg. The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) is actively exploring these leads to get to the bottom of the match-fixing scandal.Officers in intelligence agencies has obtained strong pointers to the fact that Cronje was under extreme pressure from the South African mafia that was working in tandem with Ibrahim-Salem to mislead the investigations which partly explains Cronje's half-statements and flip-flops.Cronje appeared before the King Commission in the first week of June and was criticised for making one statement a day and contradicting it the very next day. The South African mafia, predominantly into drug-trafficking, is believed to have used its methods and resources to bring pressure on Cronje after it seemed as if he was going to spill the beans.Intelligence sources say that South Africa has been a pivotal point of narcotic trade and drug mafia with links to Indian counterparts. Huge stocks of narcotics like hashish, heroin, charas and brown sugar are apparently first trafficked to Africa from where they are shipped to Europe and United States for about 20 perc cent of the profit. Besides drug trafficking, members of the D-company and its associates are into large-scale betting and match-fixing. The key players include gangster-turned-hotelier Sharad Shetty alias Anna based in Dubai and Pakistan's Hamid Quasim.Organised crime gangs in South Africa are involved in smuggling of diamonds and large quantities of the contraband find their way into Indian markets after being routed through Hong Kong. Money from the narco-diamond trade is channelled into betting, intelligence sources said. Earlier, Dawood Ibrahim and his key associates managed to the eliminate the Pakistani narco-arms cartel led by the Bhatti brothers. This enabled Dawood to establish links with the South African mafia, sources added.The recent murder of Ashraf Patel, Mumbai-based businessman, may well be linked to the on-going match-fixing controversy as Patel was a regular vistor to South Africa, sources said. Uday Shah, another Africa-based diamond trader, died under mysterious circumstances few days after Patel's murder. Pakistan's biggest bookie and alleged match-fixer Hanif Cadbury alias Sixer too was killed by the South African mafia. Police sources revealed that Abu Salem was close to cricketers not only from India but Pakistan as well.The nexus between Indian and South African mafia assumes significance in the light of the fact that former test batsman Dean Jones told Australian cricket officials that he feared for his safety if forced to name the crickter he suspected was involved in match-fixing. Jones declined to name the player for fears of reprisals from organised mafia involved in betting and match-fixing in India.
