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Bindra lashes out at Rungta, Morarka

Inderjit Singh Bindra today lashed out at former BCCI chief P M Rungta and board vice-president Kamal Morarka for levelling 'fallacious' charges against him, and challenged them to refer the matter to the CBI for a thorough probe.

In a statement, refuting the charges by Rungta, Morarka and other BCCI functionaries earlier this week, the former board president claimed that Rungta and his associates used the media forum for purely diversionary tactics, aimed at defusing allegations made by the Punjab Cricket Association in its written report to the CBI.

Bindra claimed that he has records at his disposal to debunk all the allegations but would not like do so in the interest of probity, high ethical and moral standards.

Since the allegations were made publicly, he challenged Rungta and Morarka to send them in writing to the CBI for a thorough probe along with the allegations submitted by the PCA.

Rungta had during a press conference in Bombay on May 14 made certain allegations against Bindra and questioned his fuctioning while he was the president of the board from 1993 till 1996, as also while he was the convenor of the Reliance World Cup organising committee in 1987.

Similar allegations were made by Morarka and a couple of BCCI functionaries during seperate press conferences in Delhi on May 15.

Bindra questioned the motives of Rungta and Morarka in raking up issues, in some cases after 13 years and in others between three and four years , and levelled counter allegations against Rungta.

He charged that Rungta had been involved in numerous scams during the last two decades. "Diversion of the board's funds and their deposit in a private bank to derive personal benefit, investment of board funds in badla transaction at stock exchange and betting on cricket matches on a large scale are some of them," he said.

He said that out of a dozen people or so who were present at the press conference only a couple of them made observations while the remaining were mute spectators. In the written statement, words were attributed to each one of them, he said.

''This was more like a puppet show with strings being manipulated by an invisible hand... and that explains apparent confusion and incoherence in the statements.

''I do hope the officials who have raised the issues have the courage to put them in writing so as to take legal responsibility of the statements they made and subject themselves to legal scrutiny and face the consequences if allegations proved to be false,'' he said.

UNI