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Kapil will sue over match fixing allegation |
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May
6, 2000 NEW DELHI, MAY 5 (AP) - Kapil Dev, India's former cricket captain, will sue a cricket board official for alleging that he offered money to a player to under-perform, newspapers reported Friday.
Dev denied cricket board official Inderjit Singh Bindra comments quoting player Manoj Prabhakar as saying he was offered dlrs 25,000 to underplay during a match against Sri Lanka in 1994, the reports said.
Dev, who is a cricket icon in India, said Thursday that his lawyers are taking legal action against Bindra's "wild and baseless allegations" in an interview to CNN that was broadcast Wednesday night.
Prabhakar was not immediately available for comment. But he has said he will give details only to India's federal police, who are investigating a wider match-fixing controversy that involves former South African skipper Hansie Cronje.
Bindra, a former chief of the Board of Control for Cricket in India, is in London to testify in a match-fixing case that has shattered the cricket world.
Indian police are investigating an extortion ring and a betting network that stretches from Bombay to Dubai. Soon after the probe began, a diamond trader was shot dead in Bombay last month. Police believe he may have been the target of the booking syndicate.
Police in Bombay have also questioned former skipper Mohammad Azharuddin and popular movie actor Sanjay Dutt in connection with the scandal. Cronje was charged by Indian police with receiving money from a bookie for fixing a match. Cronje denied the match-fixing allegation but admitted receiving dlrs 10,000 from a bookie for information on an England-Zimbabwe match, part of a one-day triangular series in South Africa in February.
Police say bookies are the first link in a complex chain that includes match fixers who have contacts with international cricket players and celebrities keen on betting.
Betting on cricket, the most popular sport in the country, is illegal. But bets worth an estimated 10 billion rupees (dlrs 230 million) are placed on one-day international matches across the country. All money earned through this evades the income tax net. |