Prabhakar hands over videotapes to CBI

Prabhakar, who had made allegations about match-fixing in 1997, arrived at CBI headquarters in the afternoon and submitted video tapes to CBI’s special crime branch officials.

Before entering the CBI headquarters, he said "I have come to finish the task I have been assigned."

Asked whether he was facing any pressures not to pursue the case, Prabhakar said "Pressures are there but I and my friends (pointing to Tejpal) are determined to bring the case to its logical conclusion."

Prabhakar, who was with the CBI officials for nearly an hour, said the CBI had told him that after going through the tapes they would decide about the future course of action.

He ducked all questions from the media on whether he was facing any threat and said, "I do not want to comment on this issue now."

Asked about charges made by former cricketer Prashant Vadiya and other officials that the secret video recording was an act of betrayal by him and that the tapes were "doctored", Prabhakar, who appeared before the CBI for the second time, said "these statements hardly matter…when they spoke to me they did so straight from their heart."

Asked why he was favouring a particular website rather than be open to the media in general, he said "These people have suffered because of me…they had to leave their weekly magazine under different circumstances…I have to help them."

The former all-rounder said he would be submitting the remaining portions of the tapes very soon to the agency.

Prabhakar has named Kapil Dev as having offered him Rs 25 lakh to play below par in a one-dayer in Sri Lanka, which the former Indian captain has denied.

Earlier, Prabhakar had met the CBI officials on May 24 and made his submissions for about 90 minutes before two officials of the agency about his charge.

The CBI has so far examined seven persons including former Cricket Board chief I S Bindra and Delhi District Cricket Association’s Sports secretary Sunil Dev, former Indian cricket team manager Ajit Wadekar and cricketer-turned commentator Navjot Singh Sidhu and scores of bookies in Mumbai, agency sources said.

CBI has also prepared a list of persons to be questioned and may send teams to different places in the country and abroad, they said.

The match-fixing inquiry by the CBI’s special crime branch will cover all the allegations levelled by some cricketers and members of the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) in the past.

The Government has empowered CBI to probe any other scandal or allegations concerning the game.

The investigating agency has asked Bindra, who submitted a personal report running into 360 pages on May 15 about the selection procedure for the Indian Cricket team, whether the Board had any system of checks to find if any match had been fixed, the sources said.

The agency registered a Preliminary Enquiry (PE) into the match-fixing scandal after the Sports ministry sent it a letter in this regard.

A team under Joint Director R N Sawani has been formed to probe the allegations.