Sonia Gandhi asks Government to speed up match fixing probe

Though the focus remained on South Africa and the submission of its interim report by Judge Edwin King to the government there, there was some action on the Indian front too. The Union Finance Minister Yashwant Sinha on Friday made a statement in the lower house of Parliament on the income tax (IT) raids conducted on players, officials and bookies.

Sinha informed the Lok Sabha that the searches were conducted under sec 132 of the IT in Delhi, Mumbai, Calcutta, Bangalore, Hyderabad, Ahmedabad, Patiala and Chandigarh. He said the search on cricketers, officials, bookies and their relatives yielded around Rs 4 crores. "Seized papers and documents were being examined and necessary action in accordance with the law had been initiated," the Minister said.

Meanwhile, a TV channel reported that the status report prepared by the IT department claims that the total cash seized during the raids on the cricketers yielded only Rs. 25, 000. The report said jewellery worth Rs. 1.2 million and other assets worth Rs 93,000 were also seized from the raids conducted in the players homes.

On a separate front, Indian National Congress president Sonia Gandhi has demanded that the investigation in the match-fixing case be speeded up and be accorded top national priority reports PTI. Addressing the party's students wing, National Students Union of India (NSUI), Sonia said the scandal, which is being probed by CBI, had disturbed all, particularly the youth in the country.

In South Africa, the much awaited interim report turned out to be a damp squib with no recommendations on any players. The Commission Chairman Judge King said in Cape Town that "I will not be making any recommendations at this stage as I will still have to hear evidence from Hansie Cronje and others again." King who heads the commission also gave a clearance to the scheduled August 19 disciplinary hearings by the United Cricket Board of South Africa (UCBSA). In a statement the commission's chairman said "although there were no final recommendations in the report, cricket authorities would be able to convene a hearing on Herschelle Gibbs, Henry Williams and Pieter Strydom."

Having decided that the Indian team should not participate in the Sahara Cup, the Government should make amends by taking this opportunity to speed up the ongoing investigation. It should ask the concerned agencies to complete the probe before the ICC knock out tournament in October so that a decision can be arrived on the coach and those players on whom there is needle of suspicion.