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Prabhakar: Victim, or villain?

On Sunday afternoon, Manoj Prabhakar along with the heads of the recently inaugurated website www.tehelka.com hosted a press conference at the Hotel Meridien in New Delhi. Present were bigwigs from the field of politics and sports administration. And the intention? To focus the spotlight on the evil doings behind the under-achieving facade of Indian cricket.

'We need to focus public attention on what is going on, since it is clear the BCCI is only interested in sweeping the matter under the carpet," website editor Tarun Tejpal told a television channel on Sunday afternoon, as the media waited for the balloon to go up.

Meanwhile, Outlook magazine (for which Tejpal, and Aniruddha Bahal, the correspondent who recently did an exhaustive interview with Prabhakar, worked till recently) has upped the ante, with its latest issue alleging that Prabhakar himself is linked to match-fixing.

In its issue of date June 5, the magazine quotes a senior Mumbai police officer as saying, "Prabhakar was as guilty as -- if not more guilty than -- the people he is pointing fingers at."

The story is based on telephone intercepts organised by the Mumbai police, and similar intercepts by the Directorate of Revenue Intelligence, dating back to the early nineties. A DRI official privy to the intercepts is quoted in the magazine as saying, "His (Prabhakar's) name was quuoted often, and sums of money were also entioned when these bookies were talking."

The DRI officials, and Mumbai police, were at the time monitoring the nexus between Mumbai bookies and the Dubai-based underworld when they chanced on conversations that revealed the involvement of four cricketers.

"The intelligence which we gathered at the time was explosive enough to be taken ahead," a DRI source tells the magazine. "If we were gien the go ahead, we could have hit paydirt."

The intercepts were reportedly handed over to then Revenue Secretary M R Sivaraman, who in turn passed them on to then BCCI chief Madhavrao Scindia.

DRI sources said that the names of four cricketers -- Mohammad Azharuddin, Nayan Mongia, Ajay Jadeja and Manoj Prabhakar -- were mentioned repeatedly in the intercepted conversations.

"All their names were being bandied about. It distinctly gave the impression that they were involved directly or indirectly in some match-fixing deals," the source tells Outlook.

Mumbai police are reportedly in the possession of two sets of information. The first involves conversations purportedly between Prabhakar and the bookies, and indicates the former's level of involvement. The second set of tapes deals with details of match-fixing between some Dubai-based dons and their Mumbai-based henchmen, in which, again, Prabhakar's name figures.

The CBI team now probing the issues of betting and match-fixing in Indian cricket have asked the Mumbai police for copies of these tapes, and it is learnt that the Mumbai police will shortly place the evidence at their disposal before the central investigating agency.