Ravinder Nath Sawani is a former joint director with the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) who led the investigation into the infamous cricket match-fixing scandal in 2000. He shares his views on the recently published hard-hitting book on cricket malpractices by former Delhi police commissioner Neeraj Kumar, A Cop in Cricket: Inside the World of the BCCI’s Anti-Corruption Unit. Sawani, a year junior to Kumar when both were with the CBI, tries to put the record straight on a few crucial issues mentioned in the book, particularly how information was collected for the landmark CBI report on cricket match-fixing in 2000.In an exclusive interview for The Wire, 72-year-old Sawani – who founded the Board of Control for Cricket in India’s (BCCI’s) Anti-Corruption Unit (ACU) in 2012 and had earlier worked with the International Cricket Council’s Anti-Corruption and Security Unit (2007-2012) – explained why no chargesheet was filed in the scandal.In his book, Kumar writes that he discovered to his “horror” this fact, and writes that he took it upon himself to “get the chargesheet prepared and submitted” in a court just before he retired from service, as Delhi Police commissioner, in July 2013.The BCCI appointed a one-man commission of former CBI joint director K. Madhavan to probe the fixing issue. He submitted a report relying heavily on the CBI report. Acting on the Madhavan report, the BCCI disciplinary committee banned Mohd Azharuddin and Ajay Sharma for life while Manoj Prabhakar, Ajay Jadeja, and Indian team physiotherapist Ali Irani were banned for five years each.Edited excerpts from the interview follow.Neeraj Kumar writes in his book that the inquiry was “struggling to make a breakthrough, though several weeks had passed since the inception of the inquiry by the CBI”.I don’t want to get into a controversy with him on this as he has been a colleague. But the fact of the matter is that we were looking for Mukesh Kumar Gupta [one of the bookies and main accused] who was hiding.We had contacted his father, all his other relatives, as we were continuously pressuring them to produce Gupta, who was on the run. At that point, Gupta approached a Delhi police inspector and told him that he wanted to surrender to the CBI and asked him how he should go about it. That inspector said he knew Neeraj Kumar, who was with the CBI at the time, and that he would assist him in surrendering to the CBI through Mr Kumar.Also read: In a Tell-All on Corruption in Cricket, Ex-IPS Officer Neeraj Kumar Hurls a Few Bouncers at Vinod RaiBasically, Gupta wanted to surrender in the first instance, and it was just a channel – the services of that inspector and Mr Kumar – to do that. Obviously, Gupta feared how the CBI would treat him once he was taken in forcibly or whatever way. So, just to have that comfort of surrendering to the CBI in a proper manner, he used the services of that inspector, who in turn used his personal contact with Mr Kumar, to reach us. That’s the correct position.Ravinder Nath Sawani. Photo: thefederal.comHe also writes that the CBI inquiry was “broadly based on the disclosures made by M.K. Gupta and their corroboration by painstaking fieldwork”.Not necessarily. There was a very large chunk of information with us, be it from within the players’ circles, or from the other bookies we had examined already or thereafter. So, we cannot say that it was only Gupta’s information. Obviously, he was the main person who had compromised a very large number of players. Initially, through Ajay Sharma, he introduced M.K. Gupta to Prabhakar, Azharuddin and other players. It’s true that Gupta was one of the main actors in the entire fixing scandal. But it may not be true that the entire inquiry was based only on [the confessions of] Mukesh Gupta. There was a very large number of other bookies who were examined.It’s also true that there were other players who came forward and spoke to us. For example, Prabhakar’s evidence itself was quite an eye-opener with regard to certain other players. I’d say he [Gupta] played a very, very important and crucial role. But certainly, there was other evidence that was available to finish the inquiry or collect more information.Mr Kumar writes that he discovered to his “horror” that the chargesheet was not filed in this case [Cronje, Herscheele Gibbs, etc] until 2013 and that he “took it upon himself to get it prepared and submitted” before the concerned court before his retirement.It’s a fact that no chargesheet had been laid until the last day of his service [as Delhi Police commissioner]. However, the point is that some of the earlier police officers who supervised those investigations were of the view that no case was made out under criminal law to really go ahead and chargesheet this case. So, they didn’t give it that importance.Even in the CBI inquiry, we had very clearly indicated that match-fixing was not an offence in India. Therefore, there was very little that we could do in a criminal court. But then, for whatever reason, Mr Kumar thought it fit to have that case chargesheeted. About the outcome of that case, again, you are better informed than me. Even after we got extradition done [England-based alleged bookie Sanjeev Chawla, in February 2020], within a month, he was out on bail here in India. The case is still pending. Even the Cronje case was discharged [after an inquiry in South Africa].Hansie Cronje. Photo: Wikimedia Commons/CC BY 3.0.Another example: S. Sreesanth and two other players in the 2013 Indian Premier League (IPL) betting-fixing case were booked under the Maharashtra Control of Organised Crime Act (MCOCA) and various other sections of the law. But when the [Delhi sessions] court took up the chargesheet, it didn’t even go to the trial stage, and at the chargesheet stage itself, it disposed of the matter. They didn’t even start examining any evidence. In a trial, the first stage is the framing of charges, and at that stage, the court said there was no case made out under any Indian law. And it discharged all the accused [42, including Dawood Ibrahim] in that case.When it was decided, probably by discussion or consensus, that no case could be made out in the match-fixing scandal, and that the chargesheet couldn’t be laid by the CBI, was the decision taken only by the investigating officers concerned or the top brass also?Sorry, here I would differ with you completely.No, no…I’m only asking a question. I don’t know.Kindly understand that the CBI never registers a criminal case at the outset. Our legal branch was very clear right from the beginning that ‘you do your preliminary inquiry and after that, if there is a criminal case made out, then we will register an FIR and go ahead with the investigation’. As far as the CBI is concerned, it never registered a criminal case and only held an inquiry.Under customary law, the CBI is permitted to hold inquiries, especially when it was entrusted to us by the government. So, we took written opinions from three retired judges of the Supreme Court and portions of their opinions were also incorporated in our report. All three judges concurred there was no case made out. So, there was no way we could have registered an FIR. Therefore, no official investigation was ever done. We had only done an inquiry. There is a lot of difference between an inquiry and an investigation.The Delhi police, at the outset, had registered an FIR under various sections of the law, which is controversial in many fields – whether they should have done it or not. Even in the case of Sreesanth and others, there is a major debate about whether MCOCA should have been invoked or not, and whether these sections of law should have been applied at all or not, whether a case was made out at all or not. And the fact that the [Delhi sessions] court threw out the chargesheet right at the beginning… all that points to the fact that there is no way that you can deal with these cases under criminal law.Did the Delhi police have the right to file a chargesheet in this case, because the CBI had inquired into it?The Delhi police never inquired into the case relating to the match-fixing allegations against Azharuddin, Prabhakar, and all the other Indian and foreign players. Their case was only – and only – related to the Hansie Cronje matter, nothing else. They did not have any other thing on their plate except the match-fixing allegations against Cronje, because he was the subject matter of that phone-tapping incident where his name came up between Sanjeev Chawla [alleged bookie now facing trial in India] and Cronje. What I am saying are guaranteed facts; they cannot be controverted by anybody (laughs).Also read: Sanjeev Chawla: How Investigators Unearthed the Match-Fixing ScandalIt’s a technical, inter-departmental thing. My question was that while the CBI did the inquiry, was the Delhi Police also within its right to file a chargesheet?With regard to the Cronje matter, they had to take a decision because they had registered the case. With regard to all other matters, they could not have taken cognisance because that inquiry was with the CBI. These were two different departments, two different offences, and two different pieces of information altogether.Is it possible for the BCCI ACU to sign MoUs with different states for investigation, etc., to tackle cricket corruption?This proposal was mooted. Sometime back there was a proposal that certain investigating agencies should have special units amongst them to investigate, and that the ICC or the BCCI – specifically, the BCCI – sign an MoU with that agency. But it would be one-way traffic, in the sense, the police cannot be bound to be giving the BCCI any information. The BCCI can pass on any information, because the police are responsible or answerable only to the courts.So, they cannot give any information or any evidence or anything to the BCCI before the matter is decided in the courts. The only evidence which we can obtain through an application given in a court, seeking that particular evidence, is possible. But the MoU will be only for the BCCI to share information with a policing agency.Qaisar Mohammad Ali is a Delhi-based cricket journalist who has covered the sport for over three decades. He tweets at @AlwaysCricket.