Court Ignores Bcci Proposed Panel, Mudgal Committee To Continue Probe

[timmy]

The Supreme Court has asked the Justice Mudgal committee to investigate the IPL corruption issue, especially the 13 names mentioned in the sealed envelope, with the assistance of other investigators. Mudgal has communicated his willingness to take up the investigation and has been asked by the court to specify its terms and modalities on April 29, the next date of hearing.

Mudgal told CNN-IBN: "We [the panel] have given our consent, it is entirely for the Supreme Court to decide... I will wait for the Supreme Court's order."

This suggests that the court will not, at this point, entertain the BCCI's proposed three-member inquiry panel, which included Ravi Shastri, former judge JN Patel and former director of the CBI, RK Raghavan. Arguments in the morning saw the Cricket Association of Bihar, the complainants in the case, raising objections to the BCCI panel.

The Mudgal committee had been set up by the court in October 2013 to investigate the fixing allegations that arose during the IPL's 2013 season. It had submitted its report in February of this year; that report included a sealed envelope - to be seen only by the judges - with the names of 13 people who, the committee said, should be further investigated. That is what the court has now asked the committee to investigate.

The court will make a formal announcement in regard to the composition of a new panel and the terms and modalities of its operations on Tuesday.

The offer to Mudgal was made at the hearing in the morning, following which the court adjourned for lunch after which it was to hear Mudgal's reply. When it reassembled, Gopal Subramanian, who appeared on behalf of the panel in the morning, was attending to another case. The court then issued orders to the Mudgal committee's secretary Vidushpat Singhania that the panel should return to it on Tuesday, with the names of its members, as well as the details of the official agencies it would need to assist in the investigation.

The judge also asked the panel to hand over to the court registrar four audio tapes of the depositions of BCCI N Srinivasan and India and Chennai Super Kings captain MS Dhoni (one deposition each) and IPL COO Sundar Raman (two depositions). The tapes were sought by the BCCI counsel as proof of the conclusions drawn in the Mudgal report. They will be heard by the BCCI counsel, Amit Sibal and Rohini Musa, in the presence of the Secretary General of the Court.

In his opening statement, Subramaniam also said that the audio recordings of the commission had been stopped after it was suspected that they were being made available to others outside the panel without the committee's permission. The depositions were recorded between November 5, 2013 and January 6, 2014, on equipment organised and facilitated by the BCCI.

Subramaniam said that the recordings were of poor quality, and not the high-quality audio that had been promised to the panel by the BCCI. After completion, the recordings were meant to be transferred into the hands of the panel and deleted off the system immediately. It is understood that that may not have been the case with all the recordings. Subramaniam said several cricketers had deposed before the panel "with utmost confidentiality," and those recordings could not be handed over as it would "hurt the credibility of the commission."

At its last hearing on April 16, the Supreme Court had revealed that N Srinivasan was one of the 13 individuals facing allegations of corruption. It had asked the BCCI to come back to the next hearing with constructive corrective measures on conducting a free and fair probe into the IPL corruption scandal. In response to the court directive, the BCCI held an emergent working committee meeting on Sunday and put forward the names of Shastri, Patel and Raghavan.

During the morning session of Tuesday's hearing, Subramaniam provided details of Raghavan's deposition before the Mudgal committee. Raghavan had been invited by the Mudgal committee to suggest measures to tackle betting in cricket, due to his experience in the 2000 CBI investigation into matchfixing. Raghavan told the Mudgal committee that he was not in a position to talk about N Srinivasan because he owned a cricket club in Chennai that functioned under the aegis of the TNCA, making him an administrator in the TNCA set-up. The CAB was represented by Abhishek Manu Singhvi, who also happens to be a member of the upper house of the Indian parliament.

The case dates back to June 2013 when the Cricket Association of Bihar (CAB) secretary Aditya Verma raised charges of conflict of interest in the formation of BCCI's two-member inquiry panel into the IPL corruption issue. A Bombay High Court ruling later termed the probe panel "illegal". The BCCI and the CAB filed petitions in the Supreme Court against this order, with the CAB contending that the Bombay High Court could have suggested a fresh mechanism to look into the corruption allegations.

The Supreme Court then appointed a three-member committee, headed by former High Court judge Mukul Mudgal and comprising additional solicitor general L Nageswara Rao and Dutta, in October 2013, to conduct an independent inquiry into the allegations of corruption against Srinivasan's son-in-law Gurunath Meiyappan, India Cements, and Rajasthan Royals team owner Jaipur IPL Cricket Private Ltd, as well as with the larger mandate of allegations around betting and spot-fixing in IPL matches and the involvement of players.