NEW DELHI: Delhi Police on Monday named deceased former South Africa captain Hansie Cronje as accused in the infamous match-fixing case of the year 2000. No other cricketer has been named in the chargesheet apart from Cronje.
Two other South African cricketers, Herschelle Gibbs and Nicky Boje, were left out of the chargesheet because the police say they do not have enough evidence against them.
Though names of several Indian cricketers had also cropped up in the scandal, including that of former India captain Mohd Azharuddin, no Indian cricketers are named as accused.
It was a 13-year-old fixing case in which the Crime Branch of Delhi Police had revealed that an India-South Africa one-day international match played in March, 2000 was fixed. The police claimed that they intercepted phone conversations between London-based bookie Sanjeev Chawla and Cronje which suggested that money was exchanged to fix the match.
Though Cronje initially denied the allegations, he later admitted before an enquiry commission that he took $15,000 to leak information about forecasts before the match after which he was banned for life. The disgraced SA skipper died in a helicopter crash in 2002.
The charge sheet was filed before link magistrate Akash Jain as Chief Metropolitan Magistrate (CMM) Amit Bansal was on leave.
The 90-page charge sheet will come up for consideration on Tuesday before CMM Bansal.
Police has named Cronje, who was killed in a plane crash in 2002, in column 2 of the charge sheet — which lists the accused who are dead or against whom proceedings are abated.
London-based bookie Sanjeev Chawla, bookie Manmohan Khattar, T-Series owner Gulshan Kumar’s brother Krishan Kumar, Delhi-based bookie Rajesh Kalra and Sunil Dara alias Bittoo have also been named as accused.
According to police sources, the chargesheet is mostly based on King’s Commission report, confession of Hansie Cronje and telephonic intercepts.
They said Chawla and Khattar are hiding in UK and US respectively. Police will issue red corner notices against them and begin the process of their extradition after filing the chargesheet, they said.
It was in April 2000 that the Crime Branch of Delhi Police had stumbled upon the match-fixing scandal when they intercepted calls of a London-based bookie.
In May this year, during the investigation in the spot-fixing case in which police have arrested 29 people including three cricket players — S Sreesanth, Ankeet Chavan and Ajit Chandila — the attention of the investigators was drawn to a pending case in which Cronje and others were named.